July 7, 1898] 



NATURE 



225 



on it a series of most interesting symbolic and fetish 

 emblems. From its centre in front, the different symbols 

 follow each other in the same order round both halves 

 of the circumference. The central symbol is a bullock's 

 head ; then, in succession, a stone neolithic celt ; an arm 

 excised at the shoulder (with a tripod-like ornament 

 covering the termination, and in its hand a three-pointed 

 object) ; a frog ; a fish, with protruding eyes, which seems 

 to resemble more nearly than any other the curious 

 mud-hopping Periophthalmus koelreuteri^ so common on 

 the brackish margins of West African rivers, or, possibly, 

 it may be intended for— though very unlike — the electric 

 fish {Malapterurus\ which is a powerful fetish on different 

 parts of the coast, because of the " quaking and trembling 

 It produces in the arm " ; then follows another bullock's 

 head, which, with a second neolithic stone axe, completes 

 the series. 



The bullock's head, which occupies the central position 

 among the symbols, is doubtless a fetish emblem. The 



Fig. 



Beni have large herds of black and white cattle, as 

 described by Burton ; and bullocks form one of the chief 

 sacrifices, human beings being the other, when the king 

 is making "country custom" for his father and dead 

 ancestors. The same emblem was much in evidence 

 also in Dahomey, when, " during the customs," as Com- 

 mander Forbes records, "a party carrying the fetish 

 gear is headed by a man in a huge coat of dry grass, 

 wearing a large bullock's head. As he passes, all the 

 boys follow crying ' Soh, soh ! ' This is the repre- 

 sentative of the god of thunder and lightning." One of 

 these actual masks formed part of the Benin loot, and is 

 now in the National Collection. 



The next emblem to this, on each side, is the repre- 

 sentation of an undoubted neolithic celt. These im- 

 plements, which occur in the ground in many parts of 

 Africa, are, among the Yorubas, considered to be 

 "thunderbolts which Shango or Jakuta, the thunder god, 



cast down from heaven, and are venerated as sacred 

 relics. Among the negroes in Tobago, in the West 

 Indies, where they disinter similar neolithic axes, from 

 time to time, in digging holes for sugar-canes, the stone 

 is often boiled, and the water drunk to cure various 

 kinds of ailments. The tusk-holders that have beerr 

 secured for the Liverpool Museum must be of great 

 antiquity, for they are overlaid with a very rich patina, 

 the result of long exposure. 



The little statuette (Fig. 3) .is very interesting. It 

 represents a native soldier or hunter, standing with a 

 flint-lock in his hand. The upper part of his body is 

 clothed in a garment ingeniously made of the two halves 

 of a headless leopard's hide. A short pleated kilt-like 

 garment encircles his loins. He wears a bandolier, a 

 short sword, a hunting-knife, and a powder-flask made 



of elephant tusk. The most interesting detail of this 

 statuette is ur.doubtedly the flint-lock, as it seives to fix 

 the period anteiior to which this castmg could not have 

 been made, i.e. 1650 to 1640, the date of the invention 

 of flint-locks. 



The elaborate details on the plaques, statuittcs and 

 tusk-hoklers prove that whoever the artist was who 

 designed these objects, he was, or had beer me, well 

 acquainted with the religious or fetish feelings and ideas 

 of the people, their ceremonies and customs, and with 

 the minutest details of their various garments, ornaments 

 and accoutrements, and was no passing visitor. His 

 skill and patience are btyond question. 



The material of which these various objects is com- 

 posed is not bronze, as has been generally staled in most 



NO. 1497, VOL. 58] 



