336 INDUSTRIAL INSTITUTIONS. 



In our own time Africa furnishes sundry transitional 

 forms. The Hottentots and Damaras are pastoral and 110- 

 madic only. The Bechuanas &quot; lead their herds to pasture, 

 and construct enclosures for them; &quot; and, besides their gar 

 dens, &quot; their fields are commonly fenced round. Thomp 

 son says of them: 



The Bechuanas * ; are agriculturists to a certain extent; but not 

 sufficiently so as to derive from the soil more than a precarious and 

 insufficient addition to their subsistence as herdsmen and hunters. &quot; 



Of the Kaffirs we read that they secure a continuous sup 

 ply of green grass by burning the old grass; that they dig 

 with little spades of hard wood ; that they have fences round 

 villages and sometimes round cornfields ; and that they have 

 subterranean granaries like the Iroquois. The Coast-negroes 

 &quot; have neither plough nor beasts of burden to assist in the 

 operations of the field:&quot; their agriculture &quot;consists in 

 throwing the rice upon the ground, and slightly scratching it 

 into the earth with a kind of hoe; &quot; and they &quot; never raise 

 two successive crops from the same plantation.&quot; In Congo 

 the land is manured only with the ashes obtained by burning 

 the long reedy grass: they have no draught animals and 

 therefore no ploughs. Agriculture among the Ashantis has 

 not progressed beyond clearing and burning followed by a 

 rude breaking up and scattering of seed. The Inland ne 

 groes, who cultivate many plants, are more advanced in their 

 modes of operation, as well as in the variety of their animals : 

 camel, horse, ass, ox, pig, goat, sheep, turkeys, ducks, geese, 

 and fowls. A people near the Gambia visited by Mungo 

 Park &quot; collect the dung of their cattle for the purpose of 

 manuring their land.&quot; A race of higher type, the Fulahs, 

 who have horses as well as cattle, &quot; raise successive crops 

 from the same ground . . . they collect the weeds, &c. . . . 

 and burn them . . . hoe into the ground the ashes, after 

 having mixed them with the dung of cattle.&quot; Still more 

 developed is agriculture among the most powerful of the 

 African peoples, the Dahomans; who have cattle, sheep, 



