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‘.

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.

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.

Certain Bantu languages to-day are developing as literary media, not only for official, educational, correspondence or publicity purposes, but for the more aesthetic side of life, for mental and spiritual culture. It is appropriate to consider now what basis the Bantu languages, qua Bantu languages, have upon which to build a distinctive literature, what natural equipment for literary success.