150 Report S.A.A. Advancement of Science. 



tales reveal, more than anything else, the mentality of South African 

 races, their moral ideas, and also some obscure, ill-defined notions 

 of metempsychosis which creep into their minds. The Bantu folk- 

 lore offers an immense field of enquiry. Besides the tales, there 

 are any amount of proverbs, enigmas, poetry (especially under the 

 shape of praise of the chiefs by special individuals) most of which 

 might disappear before long. Some of the folklore of the Basuto, 

 of the Zulu, of the Xosa, of the Thonga, of the Loyi and Subiya 

 (Zambesi tribes) has been published, but how scanty is the material 

 at hand compared with the richness of the material which might be 

 gathered ! 



(3) The Book on Ethnology. 



Under this title we include all information about the internal 

 history of the tribes, the relations of their clans, their wanderings 

 in historical times, and the more or less legendary stories about their 

 origin, their ancient migrations. Fifty years hence, all these remem- 

 brances will have gone for ever ; now it is still possible to find old 

 men who have kept the traditions handed down from generation to 

 generation. But the native schoolboys have no inclination whatever 

 to learn what their forefathers did. They crave for English, for white 

 man's knowledge alone, and as very little is done by educational 

 authorities to induce them to keep that treasure, it is bound to get 

 lost very soon. Let, therefore those recollections, and all information 

 about the evolution of the tribes, be gathered at once, and those 

 precious documents will be one of the means by which science will 

 be able to solve the mystery of the origin of the Bantu, and of their 

 development in the past. 



(4) The Linguistic Book. 



Each South African language ought to have its grammar and 

 its vocabulary scientifically and fully published. A good many of 

 such books already exist, and Suto-Pedi-Chwana, Zulu-Xosa, Thon<Ta- 

 Ronga, at least, have been thoroughly studied by linguists, without 

 speaking of the publications of Bleek and others about Bushmen 

 and Hottentot idioms. But we know almost nothing about most 

 of the languages spoken between the Limpopo and Zambesi, the 

 Chopi, Tonga of Inhambane, Ndao, Manyika, Senna, etc. Though 

 the studv of the language does not belong to Ethnography proper, 

 those two sciences are by no means indifferent to each other. The 

 classification of the tribes can be based only on the comparison of 

 their grammar ; the interesting grammar of Bleek and Torrend shows 

 what great results can be reached by such a comparative study, and, 

 as regards the vocabulary, when one peruses a book like Colenso's 

 Zulu vocabulary, one can see at once how an intelligent explanation 

 of the words introduces the student into the true knowledge of the 

 native mind and habits. Another example : Sir Harry Johnstone, 



