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This booklet is the Frazer lecture for 1933, and contains many interesting data from the author's field work and other sources on a topic so well suited for a Frazer lecture. King killing and rejuvenation ceremonies are discussed without going very deeply into the psychological aspect of the question. The cases in which the welfare of the country depends on the potency of an individual are explained not from the viewpoint of the believer as due to the projection of the supernatural potency of the father, or of the primal scene into the universe, but as an identification with environment: that is, from the viewpoint of the kings in question. This may be accepted as an additional motivation. Professor Seligman does not quote the reviewer's contribution to the same subject ('The Pharaoh and other African Kings', in Animism, Magic and the Divine King, pp. 224-260), nor does he refer to the important data and synthesis of Frobenius in his 'Und Afrika sprach', 1913, and in the 'Atlas Africanus'. It is also remarkable that he fails to emphasize the close connection between the two main elements in the ritual of royalty, viz. the incest committed by the king and the violent death in store for him.