This article is based on researches, undertaken in 1930-1 at the request of the Nigerian Government, into the magico-religious beliefs of the Umundri group of Ibo in the Awka Division, Onitsha Province, Southern Nigeria. Umundri means ‘children of Ndri’ (a ‘Sky-Being’).

In this article I give an account of some features and forms of sacrifices among the Nuer of the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan. It is intended to fill a gap in a series of articles designed to cover various aspects of the religion of this people. The central act of Nuer religious ritual is sacrifice, and all their sacrifices have this in common, that they are a means of making contact with spiritual beings. Those of which I speak more particularly in this article have further in common that they are made when a misfortune has happened or threatens and with the purpose of propitiating whatever spiritual being is responsible for it, though the sense of propitiation may be more marked in some sacrifices than in others and may combine with other elements in various configurations of meaning.

A Detailed description of a kind of joking relationship among the Ambo is welcome for several reasons. The institution of funeral friendship is found in the cultures of a far wider region than that indicated by the writer. Not only do the tribes of the Bemba and Nyanja groups associate partnership in funeral obligations with freedom of mutual abuse, but this is also culturally accepted widely in Tanganyika and Portuguese East Africa. It seems that from the Zambezi in the south to Lake Tanganyika, and from the east coast to the Luangwa river, are to be found the main elements of the institution described for the Ambo. Hitherto they have been known by their vernacular names: banungwe for the Bemba, uzukuru for the Nyanja, Tumbuka and Lake Shore Tonga, mwilo for the Yao, utani for the Ngoni and neighbouring tribes of Tanganyika. In every case funeral obligations mutually accepted are made the basis of an alliance between persons belonging to different clans, or even to different tribes.

Among the Yoruba, cooking is done on a hearth (aro, adiro) consisting of three stones or lumps of clay on which a pot may be set over a wood fire. Five principal cooking techniques are employed:

se, bǫ, to boil in water, or to steam in leaves;

din, to fry in deep oil;

yan, ta, to toast beside the fire, or in live embers or in a potsherd or dry pot over the fire;

sun, to roast in the fire;

bu, to bake in hot ashes.

Les Africains se sont trouvés dans l'obligation d'employer des mots nouveaux pour désigner des choses qui n'existaient pas avant l'arrivée des Européens. Ces néologismes produisent souvent de belles réussites et ainsi des mots pittoresques se sont formés. Nous donnons comme exemple quelques mots du vocabulaire francomalinké de la Guinée Française.

In his review-article ‘Gurage Notes’ (Africa, xx, 1950, pp. 335-44) of my Ethiopic Documents: Gurage (1950), Mr. Ullendorff criticizes the method I employed in collecting the material and raises some questions in relation to the grammatical description. Mr. Ullendorff makes many sweeping statements of principle concerning which I would like to say a few words.