April i;, 1884] 



NA TURE 



581 



favourably with most of the coast races, namely, their 

 lighter colour — generally a warm chocolate — and their 

 freedom from that offensive smell which is supposed, 

 wrongly, to characterise most Africans " (p. 397). 



In this instructive passage all the facts are stated with 

 tolerable accuracy. Yet the general inference cannot be 

 accepted. There is, strictly speaking, no Bantu type at 

 all, and the expression, correct in a linguistic sense, has 

 no definite anthropological meaning. But for the fact 

 that most of the peoples occupying the southern half of 

 the continent speak dialects of a common mother-tongue, 

 no ethnologist would ever have thought of grouping them 

 together as forming a separate branch of mankind. 

 Physically they must be regarded as distinctly Negroid, 

 that is, an essentially mixed race presenting every possible 

 shade of transition from the true Negro of Sudan and the 

 West Coast to the true Hamite of the north-east coast. 

 Between these two extremes they oscillate in endless 

 variety, presenting nowhere any stable type distinct from 

 either, and bound together only by the single element of 

 their common Bantu speech. On the other hand, this 

 Bantu speech itself is not Hamitic, but Negro, as clearly 

 shown by the absence of grammatical gender. There 

 appears to be also present a more or less distinct sub- 

 stratum of Negro blood in all the Bantu-speaking tribes, 

 from the Mpongwes of the Gaboon to the Ama-Khosas 

 of the extreme south-east, and from the Wa-Swahi!i on 

 the East to the Ba-Congo on the West Coast. Hence 

 these peoples should apparently be regarded rather as 

 Negroes affected by Hamitic than as Hamites affected by 

 Negro elements. In other words they are Negroid 

 rather than Hamitoid. 



The spread of a single organic speech of an extremely 

 delicate structure over such a vast area, unaided by the 

 prestige of letters, or by far-reaching political influences, 

 IS certainly a surprising phenomenon. But it is not with- 

 out its analogues in other quarters of the globe, where we 

 find an equal and even wider ditfusion, for instance, of 

 the Malayo-Polynesian, Ural-Altai:, Aryan, Athabascan, 

 and Guarani-Tupi forms of speech, also before the rise of 

 literatures and great empires. And as no sound anthro- 

 pologist regards the Aryan or the Malayo-Polynesian- 

 speaking peoples as belonging to one physical type, 

 neither can they regard the Bantu-speaking tribes as 

 constituting a single ethnical group. All these terms, 

 Aryan, Malayo-Polynesian, Bantu, are essentially lin- 

 guistic, and as such have a definite meaning. Ethno- 

 logically they have little or no scientific value. It is note- 

 worthy that, when not advocating theories, Mr. Johnston 

 himself speaks of the Bantus of the Congo I?asin as 

 Negroes. Thus at p. 29S, where he contrasts them un- 

 favourably with the half-caste Wa-Swahili of Zanzibar, he 

 writes : — " The mixture of Arab blood and Arab culture 

 gives a stability and manliness to the Wa-Swahili which 

 is lacking even in the finest race of pure Negro origin. 

 The Congo peoples, for instance, are usually amiable and 

 soft-mannered, but at heart they are seldom to be de- 

 pended on. There is something so eminently childish in 

 the Negro's character. . . . All these traits are found in 

 the black races of Africa that are of purely Negro or 

 Bantu stock ; but in the Semiticised people of Zanzibar 

 you find men of thought and reflection, whom you may 

 use as counsellors and confidants ; men who are really 

 capable of zealous service, of disinterested affection, and 

 to whom gratitude is a concept neither foreign to their 

 intelligence nor their tongue." This is true and well put, 

 and is the common experience of all travellers who have 

 had dealings with the natives of South Central Africa. 

 It shows at the same time that "even the finest" 

 Bantu peoples must ultimately be affiliated to the Negro 

 stock. 



Besides the numerous illustrations, two useful maps 

 and a copious index, this handsome volume is furnished 

 with comparative linguistic tables of the chief Bantu 



languages current in the Congo basin, as well as full lists 

 of the plants, birds, and mammals occurring in the same 

 region. A. H. Ke.ane 



NOTE 5^ 

 European science has sustained a terrible loss during the 

 past week. Monsieur Dumas, the venerable Perpetual Secretary 

 of the French Academy of Sciences, died at Cannes on the nth 

 inst. at exactly the age of the century. Old as the great 

 chemist was, his death will be felt as a real and serious loss to 

 French science, for up to the last he took an active interest in 

 all its doings. We gave in vol. xxi. so full a biography from the 

 masterly pen of Prof Hofmann of Berlin, that it is unnecessary 

 to go over the ground again. We may, however, attempt in a 

 future number to appreciate to some extent the position of Dumas 

 in the chemistry of the past sixty years. The funeral took place 

 at Mont Parnasse Cemetery on Tuesday, when MM. Bertrand, 

 D'Haussonville, and others delivered addresses at the grave. 

 The sitting of the French Academy of Sciences on Monday was 

 postponed after the reading of an address by M. RoUand, the 

 president, who praised M. Dumas for the talent and impartiality 

 he exhibited as Perpetual Secretary of the Academy. 



The Museums of Economic Botany at Kew are second in im- 

 portance to none in the world, and, except perhaps as to the 

 size and splendour of the buildings,. they are in every way worthy 

 of a nation which has trade relations with every part of the 

 globe. The foundation of these museums was laid by Sir W. J. 

 Hooker in 1847, when he obtained leave to fit up an old fruit 

 stoi-e with cases suitable for the exhibition of important vegetable 

 products. Ten years later' the house now known as Museum 

 No. I was opened to the public, and in 1881 this was added to 

 and the approaches greatly improved. It will be remembered 

 that' these buildings were not originally designed for museum 

 purposes, and yet such is the arrangement of the cases and so 

 well are the objects displayed and illuminated that we know of 

 no inuseum built for the purpose that we would prefer to No. I 

 Museum at Kew. The collections are contained in Museum No. 

 I, which is directly opposite the Palm House, on the other side of 

 the Ornamental W.ater, in Museum No. 2, which is close to No. I, 

 at the northern end of the Herbaceous Garden, while Museum 

 No. 3 occupies the old Orangery. At the north end of the 

 Broad Walk the last Museum contains specimens of large 

 timber, while the monocotyledons and flowerless plants are 

 arranged in No. 2, and the dicotyledons in No. i Museum. An 

 ofiicial guide to the contents of the latter Museum has just been 

 published. As nearly every object exhibited is fully labelled, 

 this guide-book does not enumerate a tithe of these, but a cer- 

 tain number of important objects are marked with a conspicuous 

 number, and these numbers are referred to in the catalogue. In 

 the 130 pages of this guide there is compressed a vast amount 

 of information, a great deal of which is easily understood, even 

 apart from the interesting collection on which it is founded ; and 

 if the student, as he walks through the Gardens, is struck at the 

 beauty of the vegetable kingdom, he will, as he studies the pro- 

 ducts of that kingdom within these museum walls, be more 

 struck at the extreme indebtedness of mankind to this kingdom 

 for the necessaries and luxuries of life. 



We regret to learn that Sir Sidney Smith .Saunders, C.M.G., 

 for many years British Consul in various Mediterranean ports, 

 and a distinguished entomologist, died suddenly on Tuesday 

 evening (iSth) at an advanced age. He was one of the original 

 members of the Entomological Society of London, and was a 

 vice-president of the .Society at the time of his death. He 

 devoted special attention to the singular bee-parasites known as 

 Stylopida:. 



