ANTHROPOLOGY 607 



museet pamphlets mentioned above, has given several examples of 

 diffusion, and Hornbostel (1933) has studied sound instruments 

 with the same object. 



Finally, evidence derived from native tradition is usually un- 

 reliable, unless such information can be checked by comparison 

 with known historical facts or astronomical data. For example, 

 Torday was told that during the reign of one of the Bushongo 

 chiefs the sun went out at noon. He was able to fix the date when 

 he found that the only visible eclipse in this region during the 

 seventeenth and eighteenth centuries occurred exactly over Bus- 

 hongo country at two minutes before noon on 30th March, 1680. 



In conclusion it may be said that the evidence from all these 

 sources indicates movement among the peoples of Africa during 

 the four thousand years under consideration, resulting in the trans- 

 mission of ideas and cultures .and the growth of new languages, 

 with probably long intervening periods of comparative stagnation. 



SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY 



The study of African social life and of the changes which are 

 taking place as a result of culture contact, bears the closest relation 

 to the other scientific subjects, since it looks at the present and 

 future of native races rather than at their past. Consequently, in 

 attempting to estimate the resources in anthropology which can 

 be directed to Africa's future, the emphasis will here be laid upon 

 those workers who stress the functional and dynamic rather than 

 the structural and static aspects of the subject. Professor Malinow- 

 ski has aptly compared the old type and the new type of anthro- 

 pology with anatomy and physiology. We might go a stage further 

 and point out that anthropology is still so large and diffuse that, 

 by comparison with other sciences, many years must pass before 

 it will find its way through the preliminary observational stage to 

 the experimental stage, now reached by many physical and bio- 

 logical sciences, when individual problems can be formulated 

 with precision and can be driven to a logical conclusion by experi- 

 ment under controlled conditions. The first stage in the slow 

 evolution of the science is the establishment of definite methods of 

 research, and in recent years anthropologists have made great 



