450 



NATURE 



[February i. 1912 



AH ADAPTIVK PEOPLE.' 



THE British Protectorate of Uganda has the dis- 

 tinction of possessing one of the most perfect 

 types of a barbarous people to be found in the world. 



tic;. I.— Drums of office. From "The Baganda." 



The Bagarida are a Bantu race, exceptionally well 

 built and healthy. Courteous and sociable, they are 

 to a remarkable degree exempt from social vices and 

 perversions. ITiey have "gone straight," as it were, 

 while other races of the same level 

 have gone crooked. Their only weak- 

 ness seems to have been one frequently 

 resulting from religious fervour, 

 namely, a predilection for human sacri- 

 fice. Their physical evolution similarly 

 has been free from perversions; they 

 have not, as so many barbarians have 

 done, tampered with their bodies, and 

 they practise no form of cutting, scari- 

 fication, or mutilation. Intellectually 

 they are remarkable for an extra- 

 ordinary faculty of imitation, 

 "especially in all kinds of mechanism. 

 Give a man time to examine an object, 

 and he will apprehend the mode of its 

 construction, and will go and produce 

 one so much like it that it is often 

 well-nigh impossible to tell which is 

 the original. Chairs, tables, shoes, 

 &c., have each in their turn been 

 closely copied. This power of repro- 

 duction extends to house-building in all 

 its details; thus there are numbers of 

 houses made of sun-dried bricks, with 

 iron roofs, which the natives them- 

 selves have built and completed with- 

 out any supervision from Europeans. 

 This trait of imitation is noticeable 

 even in small children, who may be 

 seen making toy guns, after the pat- 

 tern of those used by their fathers. 

 These toy guns are often so well made that, when 

 the triggers are pulled, they make a sharp report. 



"TheBaganda: an Account of their Native Customs and Beliefs. By 

 the Rev. John Rascoe. Pp. xix+5474-2 plans. (London : Macmillan and 

 Co., Ltd., 1911.) Price 15J. net. 



Bicycles have been cleverly imitated by boys, with 

 wheels and spokes made of reeds." 



'I'heir social rites are numerous and remarI^ 

 they give the impression of being rather a 1 

 organic system than a structure of hide-bound sufKn-- 

 stition. If their social religion can be 

 SL'paraled from their theological doctrine and 

 hierological practice, the former apfx'ars to 

 have played a more imf>ortant part than th- 

 latter, though this was well developed ii. 

 the way of temple establishments, divin- 

 beings, and priesthoods. 



Their economic and industrial systfin 

 d<-serves careful study. Every hous<liol(l 

 has its garden, and the garden mak<-> ii 

 absolutely self-supporting. Even the bark- 

 tloth garments, as picturesque in a^r^ ■'<'-< 

 fashions of wearing them as Roman i 

 are grown in the garden, each posse- ._ 

 several bark-cloth trees. But behind llv 

 liousehold is the clan. The clan not only 

 regulates kinship and marriage, but aci 

 as a friendly society, insurance company . 

 and general cooperative body. Thanks i' 

 the clan system, poverty does not exisi 

 The clans are totemic, each possessing 

 primary and a secondary totem. Desceir 

 and inheritance were in the male line; bir 

 in the royal family the system w.i- 

 maternal. 



In view of the solidarity ol th' ;.i!iiii\. 

 the clan, and the people as a whol< 

 their idea of "impersonation" is si^ 

 nificant. An heir "not only takes the offif 

 of his predecessor, but so impersonates him tha 

 it is common to hear a man telling another that h< 

 is the father or the chief of a person who is knowr, 



i 



NO. 2205, VOL. 88] 



Fig. 2 — Stocks for arms and legs, with plantain-fihre pads worn to protect the arms ar 



the sharp edges of the wood, and coil of rope for binding prisoners. From "' The Bagand^ 



to have died years before." A similar continuity is 

 secured by another method in the case of the kingly 

 office. The spirit of the dead king enters a medium, 

 who is consulted at the Temple of the Jaw-Bone. 

 This relic of the dead king, together with his 



