Another and more serious objection, aimed rather at the method of such investigations as these, is that the evidence with which they have to be content is worth little or nothing. Objectors attempt to discredit it by implying that at best it is only what A. says that B. told him about the beliefs B. says he holds, in other words, that it is the merest hearsay; and it is also sometimes suggested that when A. is a European and B. a savage, or at most a semi-civilised person of another breed, the chances are that B. will lie about his alleged beliefs, or that A. will unconsciously read his own ideas into B.'s confused statements, or that, at any rate, one way or another, they are sure to misunderstand each other, and accordingly the record cannot be a faithful one. So far as this objection can have any application to the present work, it may fairly be replied: first that the author has been at some pains to corroborate and illustrate his own accounts by the independent observations of others (and this must be his justification for the copiousness of his quotations from other writers); and, secondly, that he has, whenever possible, given us what is really the best kind of evidence for his own statements by recording the charms and other magic formulæ which are actually in use. Of these a great number has been here collected, and in the translation of such of the more interesting ones as are quoted in the text of the book, every effort has been made to keep to literal accuracy of rendering. The originals will be found in the Appendix, and it must be left to those who can read Malay to check the author's versions, and to draw from the untranslated portions such inferences as may seem to them good. The author himself has no preconceived thesis to maintain: his object has been collection rather than comparison, and quite apart from the necessary limitations of space and time, his method has confined the book within fairly well-defined bounds. Though the subject is one which would naturally lend itself to a comparative treatment, and though the comparison of Malay folklore with that of other nations (more particularly of India, Arabia, and the mainland of Indo-China) would no doubt lead to very interesting results, the scope of the work has as far as possible been restricted to the folklore of the Malays of the Peninsula. Accordingly the analogous and often quite similar customs and ideas of the Malayan races of the Eastern Archipelago have been only occasionally referred to, while those of the Chinese and other non-Malayan inhabitants of the Peninsula have been excluded altogether.