May 23, 1912] 
NATURE AND MAN IN EASTERN AFRICA.} 
(1) MES KITCHING is already favourably 
+ known to students of Africa as the 
author of an outline grammar of the Gang 
language, the Gang, or Gan, being one of the 
Nilotic tribes of central Uganda known previously 
by the Luganda name of Bakedi—“the naked 
ones.”” One might at first classify the work under 
review as a study of the Nilotic peoples of the 
northern and central parts of the Uganda Protec- 
torate; but as it includes passages dealing with 
the Bantu races of the same region, especially in 
regard to the Banyoro, the more general descrip- 
Still, the most valuable 
tive title is the better. 
NATURE 
207 
most confusing and misleading to the reader, the 
more so as apparently in some passages by an 
oversight 7 is to be taken as representing the 
nasal after all.) 
For the rest, there is good material in 
this book for the ethnologist. The only 
other criticism one might raise is that the 
| book is plastered with Mr. Rudyard Kipling’s 
rhymes to an extent which is, to say the 
least, unusual. No doubt in dealing with 
backward races in Asia especially, and in 
| Africa, an occasional line or couplet from Mr. 
Kipling is much to the point; but a more or 
less serious work dealing with ethnology has 
no need for such copious quotations, and quota- 
Fic. 1.—Mwenge woman grinding millet. 
part of the book is the study of the Teso and Gan 
peoples. (In regard to this last, I have fault to 
find with the author in that, instead of following 
well-established systems of orthography for deal- 
ing with African languages, such as were good 
enough for Barth and other African philologists 
of the first rank, he starts a variant of his own, 
in which f is used in the Spanish acceptation, and 
not, as it should be, to express the nasal con- 
sonant in words like “ringing” and “bang.” 
This he expresses by another symbol, the n’— 
Studies of Some Child Races of 
With a preface by Dr. Peter 
Price 12s. 6d. 
“On the Backwaters of the Nile.” 
3y the Rev. A. |. Kitching 
5. (London: T. Fisher Unwin, ror2.) 
1 (x) 
Central Africa. 
Giles. Pp. xxiv+ 
net. 
(2) “* Animal Life in Africa.” 
a Foreword by Theodore Ro sevelt. 
Heinemann, 1912) Price 18s. net 
NO. 2221, VOL. 89] 
Ry Major J. Stevenson-Hamilton. With 
Pp. xvii-+ (London : William 
§39. 
Tobacco is seen growing beside the house on the left. 
From “On the Backwaters of the Nile.” 
tions which do not always show the poet at his 
best. 
In one of the appendices there is an excellent 
selection of fifty proverbs in the Lunyoro language, 
in which the original version is given as well as 
the translation. These have every appearance of 
being authentic, and represent very fairly the wit 
and wisdom of a most interesting Bantu tribe. 
One becomes very weary of seeing in books and 
newspapers dealing with Africa a host of bogus 
proverbs expressed in English and attributed to 
the African merely because the writer of the book 
or newspaper thinks that is what the African 
ought to say. But this contribution to the stock 
of the negro’s wit and wisdom on the part of Mr. 
Kitching is quite otherwise; it is genuine. 
