Miss perham brings to her task of reviewing Native Administration in Nigeria not only the experience gained by similar research in East Africa and in the Pacific, but also the skill in marshalling the salient events from the earliest times up to the present day which we expect from a trained historian. Nor has she anything to fear from the ‘peculiarly savage’ criticisms in which the professional anthropologists are, it is said, wont to indulge.

In this paper I do not propose to try to discuss those contributions made in the name of psychology to anthropological research and explanation which are already well known. Most of these have been made in the interests of some general theory. They involve assumptions concerning which there is legitimate and sharp division of opinion. My task is the less controversial one of attempting a survey of developments of psychological research which have taken place during the last ten or fifteen years, with a view to indicating the ways in which they may be of service to the anthropologist.

The claim of psychology to a share in the study of culture and society is by no means firmly established. Indeed, a certain school of modern sociology and anthropology would cleanse the study of society from all psychological assumptions and interpretations and would deal with cultural and social phenomena as phenomena entirely in their own right. As this article is to describe an attempt to include psychology in anthropological field work a few words must be said first in justification of this attempt to examine, over and above the concrete realities of culture, the psychological factors ‘behind’ culture.

The purpose of this article is to contribute some facts from Mendi life to the problem of differentiation and uniformity in primitive societies. As this problem is closely connected with the wider and controversial issue of the place the individual occupies in primitive group life, a few remarks will precede our facts.

I must make it clear at the outset that I do not profess to have any expert knowledge of nutritional questions, but I hope it will be agreed that it is riot necessary to have the knowledge of an expert in order to realize that there are vital differences between the problems of nutrition in highly developed countries of Western civilization and the tropical countries of which, in the main, the Colonial Empire consists. In these territories the bulk of the inhabitants are still living in conditions which are extremely primitive or backward.

Dès son apparition sur la terre, l'homme s'est vu entouré de forces mystérieuses. Il essaya, goûta de tout; l'expérience lui démontra qu'il devrait mettre un frein à ses désirs, à ses appétits. Il reconnut des vertus puissantes dans les plantes, dans les éléments: les unes donnent la santé, la force; d'autres les ruinent.