Belief in witchcraft was a characteristic of the Middle Ages and earlier in Europe, and a witch was executed there as late as 1782. Belief in witchcraft does not therefore place the African automatically in a special category of mankind; it is the result of being born and brought up in a society in which it is inherent. Broadly speaking a belief in witchcraft is a belief in a theory of cause and effect. It is a species of logic to explain why certain events have occurred. More particularly it is a theory of the causes of misfortunes which the believer finds to have their origins in the enmity of people possessed of evil powers. Since the belief is conditioned largely by the society in which the African is born and lives in a tribal state there is danger in the often-uttered statement that every African without exception believes implicitly in witchcraft. That is a superficial observation which is certainly not true. The African brought up outside tribal society to a greater or lesser degree will have his faith in witchcraft modified accordingly since that faith is a social and not a mental condition. An African born and brought up, for example, in England would only know of witchcraft objectively as a belief of other people. In Africa to-day, although tribal society predominates, it is not static; on the contrary in many respects it is in a state of constant change and modification, some would even say of a disintegration. In the light of this it is not surprising to find some Africans whose belief in witchcraft is being modified too.

Women in the Sierra Leone Protectorate fulfil a role which, as in the case of the men, varies in accordance with their social age. In the early stages there is little distinction between the sexes either in training or in their relation to the rest of the community.

Among the Mende, the arrival of a female child is greeted by the women with even greater delight than is that of a boy. They say that girls do not forget their mothers in time of need as boys sometimes do. A girl, like a male child, is named according to whether she is the first or a subsequent surviving child of her mother; if she is the first she will be known as Boi. The children who follow her may be named after various ancestors, or after important living members of the family. The naming is done four days after birth, and the individual woman, whose name the child is to bear, carries her out in the early morning, faces the sun, spits three times on to the child's face, and says: ‘Resemble me in all my ways and deeds, because you are named after me.’ As an infant, the child is referred to as nyalui, and though she may enjoy the considerable affection of both parents, her social significance is very small. Should she die, there is no crying for her. The corpse is simply wrapped up in leaves and buried under a banana tree, or at some other place where it is customary to deposit rubbish.

There have been many movements of population in human history, and almost as many reasons for them. But all of them have one feature in common. They arose as a result of a change either in the external circumstances confronting a society or a section of it, or in the reactions of the people to their external circumstances. Migrations have always involved preferences, and occurred when preferences have changed. Perhaps the reception area has improved. Perhaps the other area has worsened. Perhaps both processes have occurred simultaneously. Whatever the causes of the change in relative preferences, whether it be the development of racial, political, or religious persecution, the occurrence or threat of war, the discovery of new continents or new sources of wealth, the effect of new medical techniques in enabling the opening up of hitherto uninhabitable countries, or the decline in fertility in the occupied area, it is the change that precedes the movement.

It is an interesting feature of the religious practice of the Mende people of Sierra Leone that, with one exception, no offerings are made to any image of wood or stone or metal. That one exception is the stone figurine called nomoli and its use is restricted entirely to helping in the production of rice. The origin of the nomoli is still wrapped in the mystery of antiquity but it continues to play a fairly important part in the life of many of the older farmers and is still widely used.

African land tenure is a subject so vast that in dealing with it one hesitates to commit oneself to statements of general application lest particular instances should be found to controvert them. Yet, when it is considered from the point of view of culture change, it is possible to discern a number of general trends, the nature of which is similar because their cause is the same–the impact on African society of the commercial economy of Western Europe with its infinite range of forms of wealth and possibilities of acquiring them. Though other forces too are active in the modern process of culture change, this is the most pervasive, and its influence can be traced in the development of every institution. In the case of land rights, closely bound up as they are with systems of production, the influence is direct and obvious.

On a donné le nom de ‘parenté a plaisanterie’ à des institutions et manifestations diverses qui ne sont peut-être pas de même nature ou dont la nature commune, en tous cas, n'a pas été saisie. On s'est fié à l'apparence. Ou plutôt on à donné de l'importance à un facteur apparent, la plaisanterie injurieuse, qui se retrouve dans des occasions nombreuses et sans rapports les unes avec les autres. La parole, qu'elle soit injurieuse ou flatteuse, bénéfique ou maléfique, est certes avant tout porteuse de force vitale; elle a dans toutes ses applications la qualité constante d'être le verbe. Elle permet ainsi les emplois les plus différents qui, pour autant, ne sont pas obligatoirement classables dans la même série. En tous cas retenir l'aspect ‘plaisanterie’ de plusieurs phénomènes risque de lier les choses les plus hétéroclites. Une cloche sonne le glas et les mariages. II ne viendrait à l'idée de personne de prétendre que les funérailles et les noces se rencontrent dans une série dite ‘cérémonies à cloches‘.

D'aucuns pensent—à tort selon nous, — que les Pygmoïdes ont une langue qui serait totalement différente de celle de leurs maîtres. Il est vrai que les Pygmoïdes parlent un dialecte qui sonne étrange. On y rencontre plusieurs mots dont leurs maîtres actuels n'usent jamais. Des Baotó qui ont des Batswá à leur disposition, les comprennent très facilement, et beaucoup savent parler leur dialecte. Il en est tout autrement des Baotó qui n'ont jamais fréquenté les Batswá: au début, ils ne les comprennent pas du tout.

L'explication de l'apparition et du développement de l'arme et de l'outil est, chez les Bambara comme chez les autres peuples Noirs, contenue dans leur métaphysique. Ce n'est point ici le sujet que nous voulons traiter car il nous entraînerait à exposer le système du monde dans cette population. Mais encore faut-il faire allusion à son fondement pour ne pas réduire l'histoire de ces instruments à leur seul développement matériel, alors qu'encore aujourd'hui elle est tout imprégnée d'éléments religieux.

The Province of Zaria, in Northern Nigeria, has a population of some 540,000.The central portion of the Province, covering the largest part of the area, is sparsely populated and contains some pagan tribes who have little to do with the economy of their Hausa neighbours to the north. There is a southern fringe, more thickly peopled, where Christian missions are established and where the people buy and sell with neighbouring communities to the south. This paper is not concerned with these parts. We shall deal only with the northern part of the Province. Its area is about 7,400 square miles. The African population of this area which we are considering amounts to some 323,000, of whom about 40,000 are Fulani cattle people, about 10,000 southern clerks and workmen, and the rest Hausa farmers and traders. The European and Syrian population, comprising about 360 civilians and about 120 military personnel, is fairly evenly divided between the two towns of Zaria and Kaduna. The country stands on the northern edge of the ‘middle belt’ of orchard bush, and extends in places into the southern fringe of the great savannah belt of the western Sudan. Its climate is therefore a good deal kinder than that of the barer lands of Kano and Sokoto, and more suitable for intensive peasant cultivation than the wetter countries to the south where the tsetse and other insect pests have held back indigenous development. The economic activities of the African population will be described in detail hereafter.

Nigeria is not only a recent creation, but it can with justice be called an artificial creation with a heterogeneous population. This is the reason why the social system of Nigeria is fraught with problems of which the first and foremost is the problem of integrating many divergent elements in social, religious, political, and economic life, of selecting what is good from each of these elements, and reconciling them with the culture of an invading and stronger civilization.

Marriage among the Nuer is brought about by payment of bridewealth and by the performance of certain ceremonial rites. The rites cannot take place without the payments, but transfers of cattle do not by themselves bring about the union. Both are necessary and they proceed in a connected movement towards the full establishment of the union. Each enforces and reinforces the other. The bride's people can, by holding up the rites, put pressure on the bridegroom's people to make the payments due to them, and the bridegroom's people can, by withholding the cattle, induce the girl's family and kin to advance the ceremonies. First one pedal is pressed down and then the other as the marriage is propelled to its appointed end, the birth of children and the sharing of a home. It is undertsood that payments should have reached a certain point before a certain rite is held, and the performance of the rite is a recognition of the transfer of cattle up to that point. Payments of cattle and marriage rites therefore tend to alternate, though there is no fixity about the alternation and no marriage is exactly the same as another in this respect. The new social ties of conjugality and affinity are made stronger by each payment and by each ceremony, so that a marriage which is insecure at the beginning of the negotiations becomes surer with every new payment and rite; both sides, by the giving and receiving of cattle and by joint participation in the rites, becoming more deeply committed to bringing about the union. Therefore a marriage which has reached the final rites may be regarded as a stable union and will generally prove to be so.

A Great many criticisms have been made of South Africa's treatment of her native population. Many of these have been well founded, but at the same time it is well to remember that it is not easy, in a country where over three-quarters of the population is living at a totally different historical level from the rest, to decide what Professor Julian Huxley calls the optimum rate of advance for the more backward people. Undue haste results in the detribalization of people who have not yet had time to adjust themselves to western modes of life. The gold-mines of the Rand, for example, have been responsible for the growth of the evil of migrant labour, which drains the native reserves of their able-bodied men, and creates huge urban populations of Natives who have lost touch with tribal customs and sanctions, and have not had time to acquire the western ideas which should take their place.

Chez tous les peuples, civilisés ou non, le pouvoir royal est marqué ou symbolisé par un emblème qui peut être une couronne, un sceptre, ou quelqu'autre objet comme l'escabeau doré, ou Golden Stool que le livre de Edwin Smith a rendu célèbre. Au Basutoland l'un des premiers portraits du roi Moshesh le représente tenant en main un bâton, ou sceptre, d'environ un pied et demi de longueur et surmonté d'une boule ronde. C'étaitle molamu oa tsukulu, ou ‘bâton (en corne) de rhinocéros’ qui est pour les chefs du Basutoland, le principal emblème du pouvoir. Parmi les écrivains qui ont dépeint les coutumes des Basuto nous n'en connaissons pas qui aient parlé en détail de ce sceptre d'apparence plutôt commune, mais dont l'importance mérite d'être signalée.

This is a preliminary report on the social and political significance of the rainshrines as an integrating force in Tonga society. In a sense it is a misnomer to refer to them as rain-shrines, for they are also appealed to on any occasion of general community disaster, such as epidemics or cattle plagues, but to the Tonga themselves the dominant aspect of the shrines is their efficacy in ensuring the proper rainfall.

This article discusses the place of the vernacular and of vernacular literature in African education. It is written from the standpoint of Northern Rhodesia, and the Ila-Tonga group of peoples known to the writer have been particularly in mind. Many of the general principles enunciated, however, will be found to apply over a much wider area.