Five years ago I happened to be passing through the Wurkun district of the Northern Provinces of Nigeria and used the opportunity to make some ethnographical inquiries. The people of the district, who are located on the north bank of the Benue River opposite Lau, had been described by Mrs. Temple (in her Notes on the Tribes of the Northern Provinces of Nigeria, compiled from official records) under the generic term of ‘Wurkum’, as though they constituted a homogeneous tribal unit. But from my inquiries it appeared that the term Wurkun (not Wurkum) merely meant ‘the people of the hills’, and included seven distinct groups of diverse origin, some speaking Bantu languages and some Sudanic. Notes and vocabularies were obtained for each group, but in this paper a short description of one of the groups only, viz. the (Ba-) Kulũ, can be given.

Il est un domaine de l'anthropologie qui est encore fort peu exploré et par suite fort mal connu, c'est celui des ‘possessions’. Littré, après avoir donné tous les divers sens de ‘possession’, arrive, tout à la fin de sa liste, à ce onzième sens: ‘Terme de liturgie. État d'une personne qui est actuellement sous le pouvoir du diable, et dans le corps de laquelle il habite réellement.’ L'étude psychologique des anormaux nous a amenés à élargir considérablement la signification de ce terme. Nous savons qu'il existe tout un ensemble de faits surprenants, dans la vie des malades mentaux paranoiaques, où l'esprit se trouve, ou croit se trouver, sous l'influence d'un autre esprit. A la suite d'une rupture d'équilibre de l'état mental, sous l'influence d'émotions incontrôlables, l'individu perd conscience de lui-même et se met à parler comme un autre individu, parfois dans des langues qu'il paraissait méconnaître entièrement à l'état normal. Que ces manifestations étranges soient accompagnées d'états épileptiformes, en relation avec ce que les médecins appelent le ‘petit mal’ ou non, l'individu apparaît comme ‘possédé’, il est virtuellement sous l'empire d'un autre esprit. L'explication scientifique de ces cas de dédoublement partiel ou entier de la personnalité humaine est encore relativement peu avancée, et mon but ici n'est pas d'en apporter une nouvelle, mais de décrire purement et simplement le phénomène des possessions, tel qu'il se présente parmi les indigènes bantous, et en particulier parmi les Thonga et les VaNdau. C'est un sujet si intéressant pour la psychologie et la psychiâtrie, que les conséquences des faits décrits ici peuvent être utiles aux anthropologues, aux psychologues et aux médecins.

Das Rind drückt dem Nuerland sein Gepräge auf. Es bedingt die Ansiedlungsweise, Dorfanlage, Jahreseinteilung mit entsprechender Lebenseinrichtung und Arbeitsverteilung. Rind heisst auf Nuer yaŋ, pl. ɣɔ́k. Dine Nuer halten ausser Rindern in geringer Anzahl auch Schafe und Ziegen, beide in dem Worte dεεl inbegriffen. Sie kommen jedoch der Milch wegen nicht ernstlich in Betracht, höchstens für Kinder. Für die Tafel haben sie gelegentlich für Gäste und kleinere Familienfeiern Fleisch zu liefern. Für religiöse Zwecke kommt ihnen eine grössere Bedeutung zu als Opfergegenständen bei Gelegenheiten von untergeordneter Bedeutung oder bei Ermangelung von Rindern.

The outstanding point about British Africa to-day is the extension of the indirect system of administration. This is the more remarkable because, in the decentralized position of our territories, such extension is the result of free adoption on the part of the different governments. It is the endorsement of the system, after long experience, by practical administrators. Yet in England it has lately been subjected to a considerable amount of criticism. The object of this article is to re-state indirect rule in the light of these criticisms, in the hope of rebutting what is misinformed and incorporating what is constructive.

Discussions on culture contact are liable to be unprofitable because there is no general agreement as to what culture contact is. I have used the fashionable label in my title, but do not wish to delay over definitions. In my field-work I was chiefly concerned with one aspect of culture contact in Africa—the changes taking place in a Bantu community as the result of its contact with Europeans, and it is my methods of studying that aspect which are described here. My interest in culture contact is primarily practical. I want to know for practical ends what effect European economic activities, European administration, education, and Christian teaching are having upon a Bantu community. The nature and extent of the changes taking place in the Bantu community are my first concern, the mechanism of change a secondary one.

Regarding the true classification of the numerous Bantu languages we are still very much in the dark. We need much more detailed information upon many areas and collation of work before the various types, languages, and dialects which go to make up the Bantu family can be accurately mapped out. We do know, however, that Bantu languages are associated together broadly into a number of zones or types, which to a great extent are determined by geographical position. The migration and counter-migration of tribes, however, naturally cause much overlapping of these types and the formation of numerous enclaves which have to be taken into account. On the question of nomenclature then, the term ‘type’ will probably be less objectionable than that of ‘zone’, though the actual names of the types will of necessity be regional, such as ‘South-eastern’, ‘North-western’, ‘Central’, etc.

The Arab scholar Ibn Batuta, who travelled in the Sudan in the fourteenth century, speaks in his report of the country of Gobar, the Gobir of to-day. Gobir must at that time have been one of the important centres of Hausaland, for again Leo Africanus, a Berber born in Granada, and a great African traveller, whose book was published in Latin in 1556, mentions the language of Gobir, which is Hausa, and which, according to him, was even then one of the most important languages in the Sudan. This is still so to-day. Hausa, from being the language of very active and very far-travelling traders, has a radiation hardly inferior to that of any other African language. Hausa merchants are to be found in all the important places in the West Central Sudan between the Atlantic and Mediterranean coasts, in the oases of the great desert, and even in the Eastern Sudan and on the Red Sea: it has for centuries been a real lingua franca. It is therefore natural that the language should have come early to the notice of European travellers and scholars. In 1812, Adelung and Vater published their Mithridates, which contains among other subjects a collection of African vocabularies; in these is found on page 153 a list of ‘Afnu and Kashne’ words. Afnu is a designation of the Hausa people and Kashne is Katsina. From this time on a large number of English and German, and to a smaller extent of French, travellers, missionaries, and linguists have contributed to the exploration of the language and to its literature. There is an abundance of grammars, vocabularies, dictionaries; also a considerable amount of translation work has been done, of which Dr. Miller's translation of the Bible is the most important. The language had become literary even before the advent of the European: through Islam the Arabic script had become known, and it was soon used by learned Hausa malams to write theirown language. This art is not extinct to-day, and manuscripts on various subjects—mostly history, religion, poetry, and folk-lore, are stored in European libraries and in private libraries of native Hausa scholars.

The awards in the fourth competition for books written by Africans in African languages have now been made, and the list of prize-winners is given below. This was the first time that only three languages were selected for competition, these being Yoruba, Kikuyu, and Chuana. Altogether 39 manuscripts were received, divided among the selected languages as follows: Yoruba 18, Kikuyu 12, Chuana 9. The experts who assisted in the examination of the entries were: Mr. A. Hunt Cooke, Archdeacon J. McKay, Mr. H. G. Ramshaw for Yoruba; Rev. T. F. C Bewes, Mr. W. Scott Dickson, Mrs. Rampley for Kikuyu; Herr F. Krüger for Chuana; and the Sub-Committee appointed by the Executive Council to judge the manuscripts desires to express its indebtedness to these experts for the careful reports submitted, which gready facilitated the work.