6l2 SCIENCE IN AFRICA 



books (1923, 1927, and 1929) on Ashanti customs, religions, and 

 laws are notable examples of the work of a Government officer. 

 He also (1932) produced two volumes on the tribes of the Nor- 

 thern Territories of the Gold Coast. Spieth (191 1) has written 

 on the Ewe of West Africa. Dr. M. Fortes, a Fellow of the Inter- 

 national Institute of African Languages and Cultures, has worked 

 among the Tallense in the Northern Territories of the Gold Coast, 

 and has published papers on food (with Mrs. Fortes), fishing 

 activities, marriage customs, and the main lines of internal change 

 [see Chapter XVII). Edwin Smith, following Labouret, suggests 

 that more work on the whole culture of the peoples of this part of 

 the continent is needed. Hitherto there has been a tendency to 

 concentrate on folk-lore to the exclusion of more important aspects 

 of the problem. This criticism does not apply to Labouret's books 

 on the Lobi and the Mandingo (1931 and 1934). For the Ivory 

 Coast there are publications by Tauxier (1921, 1924 and 1932), 

 while surveys of Dahomey and the French Niger Colony have been 

 produced by A. Le Herisse (191 1) and Maurice Abadie (1927), 

 and preliminary work by M.J. Herskovits (1933 and 1937). The 

 late Maurice Delafosse worked for many years in French West and 

 Equatorial Africa and his volumes, especially Haut Senegal-Niger 

 (191 2), are classical books; his more popular works, designed to 

 interest the general public in Africa, are admirable of their kind; 

 a particularly useful one is Les Civilisations Negro- Africaines (1925). 

 L. Geismar (1933), a senior administrative officer in French West 

 Africa, published the first completed study of the customary law 

 of a colony. For the peoples of Liberia there is a general survey 

 by Sir H. H.Johnston (1906) and a monograph on the Kpelle by 

 Westermann ( 192 1 ) . Sierra Leone has been cursorily dealt with in 

 a travel book by F. W. H. Migeod (1926). Dr. Hofstra (1933 and 

 1937), working in Sierra Leone as a Fellow of the International 

 Institute of African Languages and Cultures, has made detailed 

 sociological studies. 



The Fulani are classified by Torday as a separate group, and 

 many brief accounts of their history and customs exist, that by 

 Wilson-Haflfenden (1930) being perhaps the most important. 

 Another separate group is formed by the Bambuti or pygmies, for 

 which Schebesta's work (1933) is the most complete. 



