1'J PROCEEDINGS OF THE ANATOMICAL AND ANTHROPOLOGICAL 



the next child is born even if then. It grows up without discipline 

 or training of any kind. " The child is not my slave," is all the excuse 

 the mother gives for any act of disobedience on the child's part. 



Towards the age of puberty the boys are made to pass through 

 the ceremony of initiation, and at this time the rite of circumcision is 

 administered. The Yao alone of all the tribes I have mentioned ob- 

 serves this rite : he has in all probability obtained it from the Moham- 

 medan Coast people who are the nearest neighbours of the Yao on 

 that side of his country. It is now, however, universal where no trace 

 of its Mohammedan origin is to be found. By a similar ceremony all 

 girls are initiated into the rites and customs of womanhood and wife- 

 hood, and then they are eligible for marriage. They are generally, 

 however, betrothed long before this, sometimes even before birth, on 

 the understanding that the expected child is of the opposite sex to the 

 contracting party. 



The common diseases prevalent among the natives are those 

 which have their origin in malaria, and the native is certainly as sus- 

 ceptible to malaria and its effects as the European if not more so. 

 Dysentery is a fatal disease common among them, due to their eating 

 flesh and fish in a very high condition, and especially to the first rains 

 of the rainy season washing all filth and effluvia from the villages into 

 the streams and pools where the drinking water is drawn. Pneu- 

 monia is also prevalent, and very fatal in the cold season. Measles 

 and small-pox are periodical epidemics, but by dint of vaccination the 

 Government and mission doctors have largely succeeded in stamping 

 out the disease in recent years. The " jigger " has wrought sad havoc 

 of late, and many are the limbs that have been maimed by this new 

 pest. The sleeping sickness has not yet made its appearance in the 

 Protectorate, but it is reported to have broken out on the northern 

 frontier, and as it seems to follow the great trade routes across Africa, 

 we may prepare ourselves for a visitation from this most dread of all 

 African maladies. 



Of medical knowledge the native possesses but little. Where dis- 

 ease and death are ascribed to the influence of witchcraft, it is hardly 



