408 



NATURE 



[January 25, 19 12 



patient should strive to have confidence; cultivate 

 mental oasr; (Jet into a stoical frame of mind, and 

 speak slowlv, even with a drawl, as if it did not 

 matter in the least how or what was said. Finally, 

 the teacher employs the methods of psycho-analysis by 

 which the modern psychologist obtains an insight, as 

 it were, into the work of the patient's faculties. Thus 

 by the method of Jung of '* stimulus words " awaken- 

 ing ideas, mental "blocks" may be discovered; there 

 is loss of time in certain mental efforts, and the hidden 

 cause of "dread" may be discovered, although the 

 cause may have been repressed since childhood. When 

 the dread is removed, and a feeling of calmness pre- 

 dominates, then stammering disappears, never to 

 return. Such is Mr. Appelt's interesting tale. Some 

 of it is hard to understand, more especially his view 

 that ill-defined but repressed erotic elements originat- 

 ing in childhood enter into the condition, but one 

 feels that inquiry is on the right road, and that 

 psychologists, as well as those who endeavour to help 

 the stammerer, are indebted to Mr. Appelt for a very 

 valuable and suggestive book, bearing not only on 

 stammering but on obsessions and neuroses of many 

 kinds. John G. McKendrick. 



BLACK AND WHITE IN SOUTH-EAST AFRICA. 



Black and White in South-East Africa: a Study in 

 Sociology. By Maurice S. Evans, C.M.G., with 

 a preface by Lieut.-Colonel Sir Matthew Nathan, 

 G.C.M.G, Pp. xviii + 341. (London: Longmans, 

 Green and Co., 191 1.) Price 6s. net. 



THE title of this book is a little misleading, as it 

 may induce the reader on the look-out for in- 

 formation to conclude that it describes the negroes 

 and the white men of the province of Mozambique, 

 or rather of all that portion of Portuguese 

 Africa which lies to the south of the Zambezi and to 

 the east of the British territories. As a matter of 

 fact, it is concerned mainly with the people of Natal, 

 and less closely with the natives of Basutoland, Cape 

 Colony, and the Transvaal : with South Africa proper. 

 Reference has been made in other reviews by the 

 present writer published in Nature to the unauthor- 

 ised variants of accepted names introduced by writers 

 not at present entitled to an overriding authority. 

 This trait reappears in Mr. Evans's book in one or 

 two insj:ances, but most notably in the tiresome form 

 of .Abantu, with which he replaces the widely used term 

 Bantu, that for something like half a century has 

 been employed to indicate the racial or linguistic type 

 of all the negroes of South Africa except the Hottentot 

 and Bushman. Apart from the fact that Bantu has 

 been accepted in this corollary by all the civilised 

 people of the world, and almost the entirety of writers 

 on Africa in general, and South Africa in particular, 

 the substitution of Abantu is foolish and unmeaning. 

 It simply means, in native parlance, " the Bantu," 

 the a before the ba prefix being merely the fragment 

 of a definite article which is absent from many Bantu 

 languages, and when present is employed or not, 

 according to the needs of the syntax. Pedantic as 

 it may seem, it is necessary to pounce on this misuse 

 NO. 2204, VOL. 88] 



of Abantu. because not a few reviewer* who h 

 dealt with Mr. Evans*s interesting book have i 

 garded his version as being something new .1 

 singularly correct. 



It is curious how nearly all writers on South .Afri« 

 subjects have little or no acquaintance with the r 

 of .\frica, and often entirely misunderstand the proj 

 application of this term Bantu. It was devised 

 the late Dr. VV. I. Bleek as a convenient word 

 indicate those tribes and nations of negroes who spo!: 

 prefix-governed languages, of which the verv "• 

 Ba-ntu ("men") was an effective illustration 

 sequently a Bantu physical type was alluded to 

 many writers on Africa, but it has since been she 

 that in strict accuracy it is quite impossible to a- 

 ciate exclusively any one differentiated tj'pe of n*-. 

 or negroid with the speaking of Bantu Ian: 

 These languages, undoubtedly due in their incr; 

 some invasion or impulse of the white man in Nor 

 Central Africa some thousands of years ago, may ; 

 and are, spoken at the present day by negroid gia 

 and ultra-negro pygmies and forest tribes, by peopl< 

 semi-Bushman race, and by others with a strong 

 fusion of the Nilote, the Hamite, or the Semite. In 

 sense whatever— language, physique, folkktre, tr.: 

 tions, customs — are the negroes of South .Afric 

 Kafirs, Zulus, Basuto, Mashona, &c., set apart or c: 

 tinct from the negro tribes and peoples over the wl. 

 rest of Africa, and the sooner South African stai 

 men realise this — namely, the absolute oneness of • 

 negroes south of the Zambezi with the negroes nf 

 of the Zambezi, the better for their shaping of 

 intelligent, a humane, and a practical native policy. 

 If South Africa is Bantu, so are Uganda, the Congo 

 Basin, .\ngoIa, Zanzibar. 



All who are sincerely well disposed towards the 

 South African negroes and yet at the same time 

 mere sentimentalists, but practical persons, neit; 

 undervaluing the white man nor his great importaiu 

 in the future development and civilisation of Afric 

 will welcome this book by Mr. Evans. It seems to ■ 

 reviewer an accurate and perfectly fair-minded st; 

 ment of the black and white problem in British Sc 

 Africa. The book teems with shrewd observations 

 snapshots in words (for example, chapter vi., on 

 wasted labour of the black man). The remarks 

 the supposed danger to white women, the causes 

 such danger as really exists, and the remedies, are 

 well worthy of study by politicians and philanthropists; 

 so are the remarks on the unrestricted supply of dis» 

 tilled alcohol, and on the diseases introduced by the 

 white man. In general, it may be said that the reader 

 rises from the perusal of this book with a feeling that 

 of all the divisions of South Africa the one which has 

 behaved best and most successfully in regard to the 

 treatment of its large negro population is Cape Colony. 

 .\ mistake which is frequently made by syperficial 

 writers on South African problems is to assume that 

 Cape Colony is a white country as compared to the 

 adjoining States of Natal, Basutoland, the Transvaal, 

 and Bechuanaland. Such is not the case emphatically. 

 The eastern half of Cape Colony has a ver\' large 

 Kafir population. At the present day there are some- 

 thing like 2,000,000 of negroes and 300,000 half-castes 



