l88 NATIVE IDEAS OF COSMOLOGY. 



they are Semitic. Speke, in his " Journal of the Discovery of 

 the Nile " speaks of the Abyssinian characteristics of the Wa- 

 huma, and we know that the Gallas and old Abyssinians are 

 Hamites. The Abenanzwa may thus very well be a mixed rem- 

 nant of the old Hamitic stock. Semite and Hamite are very 

 closely related, both in blood and lang^uage. and very probably 

 had the same or similar legends of Creation. If so, the Aben- 

 anzwa could have derived their like the Masai in this way, and 

 their account is nearest to the original of any in South Africa. 

 The Bantu would thus have carried away fron^. their primeval 

 home these legends, in a more or less complete form. One knows 

 how readily such legends get distorted in the course of ages- 

 Hence the very crude stories that we have to-day are remnants 

 and fragments of a much larger body of legendary lore. Of 

 course it may be argued that there is no connection between 

 Bantu and Hamite in regard to derivation of folk-lore, and that 

 the Bantu ideas of cosmology are purely their own, however 

 crude and primitive they may appear. They are thus an index 

 to the mentality of the people. I confess that this view has a 

 greater attraction for me than the other. However the problem 

 of original derivation may be, the Bantu stories are all different 

 forms of one original, and their very crtidity ix>ints to a great 

 antiquity. They are thus truly primitive, and give us some light 

 as to how their ancestors thought upon such thinas as the origin 

 of the world and of man in the remote past. 



(Read. July 5, 1917.) 



A. Gordon HoWITT.^ — The death in action is announced 

 of another member of the South African Association for the 

 \dvancement of Science, Capt. Alan Gordon Howitt, of the East 

 Surrey Regiment, having lost his life in battle m the 5th August. 

 He was at one time a student at the Agricultural College, Aber- 

 deen, and took his B.Sc. degree in Agriculture there some eight 

 years ago. He subsequently joined the German potash syndicate 

 in Berlin, and shortly afterwards came to South Africa as the 

 Syndicate's representative in this country. During his short 

 residence here he frequently contributed articles on the fertiliza- 

 tion of the soil to the local agricultural magazines. W'hen war 

 broke out he proceeded to German South-^^'est Africa in the 

 ranks of the Capetown Highlanders, and during that campaign 

 received his commission as second lieutenant. On the conclusion 

 of operations in South-West Africa Lieut. Howitt proceeded to 

 England to join the Imperial forces, and soon won a reputation 

 for exceptional courage. For a special act of bravery he had quite 

 recently been awarded the Military Cross, and was promoted 

 directly from the position of second lieutenant to that of captain. 



