June 23, 1921] 



NATURE 



529 



ago than by reading- his " Oxford Correspondence 

 of 1903" (Blackwell, Oxford; Simpkin, Marshall 

 and Co., London) between a college tutor and 

 one of his pupils whose eyes are opened to the 

 meaning of research by meeting a Zurich Pro- 

 fessor m the Long Vacation. Warde Fowler's 

 opinions and the long experience on which they 

 were based appear in the charming letters of the 

 tutor. We owe it to him. and many others like 

 him in this respect that the years since 1903 

 have brought a steady growth in the amount of 

 original work and in the significance attached to 

 it by the University. 



In the brief space available I do not propose 

 to say more of Warde Fowler's writings, excel- 

 lently described in the Times of June 16, than just 

 this— that he brought to his classical work the 

 spirit of the naturalist, always seeing through 

 the beautiful veil of literature to the everyday 

 human lives and interests that lay behind, and 

 as he delighted in them himself, so he made them 

 a delight to others. 



He was a most interesting and arresting lec- 

 turer, and had the supreme gift of selecting and 

 describing an observation so that it both illumin- 

 ated and fixed in the mind some far-reaching con- 

 clusion. No one could forget that the lines of 

 bird-migration are determined, and may be varied, 

 by sight and memory, after hearing him tell of 

 the misty autumn day when he stood on the chalk 

 cliff near Swanage and watched the little bands 

 of swallows arriving from the west and flying 

 round the English coast to the north of the Isle 

 of Wight, on their eastward journey, to cross 

 near Dover; and lo ! as he stood watching, 

 there suddenly arrived a band which acted very 

 differently, circling up into the air and darting 

 directly eastward across the sea; and then, 

 following their flight, he saw for the first time 

 what they had seen, that the mist had lifted and 

 the Needles were in sight. Then, and then only, 

 had they taken the direct and shortest eastward 

 route along the chalk midrib of the Isle of Wight. 

 Or he would tell of the thrush that, in the 

 middle of its song, saw one of its young carried 

 off by a cat, and expressed its emotions by singing 

 more loudly and passionately. 



Or it was the want of attention in observation 

 that was illustrated by the fishermen, he being 

 one of them, who, after their day's sport was 

 over, began discussing the position of the fins of 

 the trout, and, unable for the life of them to 

 remember the arrangement, paid a visit to the 

 larder to find out ! 



It is interesting to compare with this experience 

 the unconscious yet keen attention and the sure 

 memorv which come into play when man observes 

 his fellow man. And this is to be expected. 

 There have been long periods when the recogni- 

 tion of a man bv his shoulder or head seen from 

 behind, or by his gait, has meant the difference 

 between life and death. 



The memories I have recalled belong to the 

 early days of the Ashmolean Natural History 

 NO. 2695, VOL. 107] 



Society of Oxfordshire, and probably all are more 

 than thirty years old. The charm and arresting 

 personality of the speaker have left them clear and 

 bright. E. B. P. 



R. E. Dennett. 

 Mr. R. E. Dennett, who died in London 

 on May 28 at the age of sixty-four, was 

 a student of the religions, languages, and 

 customs of the indigenous races of West Africa, 

 and his work was marked by great ability and 

 originality. Son of an Anglican clergyman of 

 unusual individuality — a Devonshire man — Mr. 

 Dennett was born at Valparaiso, and had his early 

 education at Marlborough School. He went out 

 to West Africa in his early twenties, and he 

 spent more than forty years in Nigeria and in 

 what are now the French and Belgian Congo 

 territories. Comparatively early in his career he 

 was brought into association with that remarkable 

 woman, Mary Kingsley, and his mind, already 

 sympathetically disposed towards the native races, 

 received an additional powerful impetus in the 

 same beneficent direction. Thereafter he bent a 

 great part of an intellect naturally strong to the 

 attempt to interpret the character and institutions 

 of the Africans to the reading public in Great 

 Britain. 



Mr. Dennett had special opportunities for 

 observation, for in turn he was trader, explorer, 

 and official, a combination not often found in one 

 person. It was (indeed, still is) work highly 

 necessary, for it is probably safe to say that the 

 main impression left upon the minds of most 

 people in Britain as the result of reading the 

 accounts of the Stanley expeditions was that all 

 Africans are absolutely primitive and all at the 

 same stage of development. Nothing could be 

 more grotesquely inaccurate, and Mr. Dennett's 

 careful, patient, above all sincere and sympathetic, 

 researches did much to make clear the truth, 

 which is, of course, that the greater facts of 

 man's life are represented among Africans by in- 

 stitutions and observances much the same in root 

 significance as those of Europeans, but in 

 some respects less highly developed. He believed 

 firmly that the most hopeful course in British 

 West Africa was, while suppressing accompani- 

 ments of native rule which are inconsistent with 

 individual rights, carefully to preserve and support 

 the main body of African custom, which he held 

 to be essentially just and based upon the life and 

 needs of the people. That is to say, he wished 

 the African to be governed bv his own people in 

 his own way, the European Powers keeping the 

 peace while the native races gradually advanced 

 along their own lines. 



Of several noteworthy books that by which Mr. 

 Dennett will best be remembered is probably " At 

 the Back of the Black Man's Mind," a close and 

 penetrating study of the great subiect indicated 

 bv the title. Others are : " Seven Years among 

 the Fjort," "Nigerian Studies," "My Yoruba 

 Alphabet." "Universal Order," and "Periodic 

 Law." One of the most painstaking of inquirers. 



