TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION H. 527 
amount of information concerning the natives will be found in numerous hooks. by 
missionaries, travellers, and sportsmen. 
Since the above was in print Professor G. Elliot Smith has investigated six 
Pygmies from the Ituri Forest in the Congo Free State. He states, ‘ When we 
take into consideration the many undoubted resemblances of Pygmies and Bush- 
men it is easier to picture these likenesses and their attendant differences as the 
results of a diverse specialisation of two branches of one stock rather than as the 
product of a tendency to convergence of two independent races.’ } 
Mr. D. Randall-Maclver, who was sent out in advance of the British Associa- 
tion to investigate the ancient ruins of Rhodesia, has found that the archeological 
evidence points to their being of mediwval date ; his investigations and conclusions 
will be recorded in his forthcoming book, ‘ Medizeval Rhodesia.’ 
The following Papers were read :— 
1. The Totemism of the Bantu. By EH. Stoney Hartianp. 
Totemism is the reverence for, and the recognition of kinship with, certain 
objects or classes of objects of external nature, such asa species of animal, a species 
of tree or plant, or (more rarely) the sun orrain. This reverence and recognition of 
kinship arise only in savagery, and are expressed in certain definite rites and obser- 
vances. The phenomena of totemism were first observed among the North American 
Indians, and the name is derived from a native American word. Similar 
phenomena have subsequently been observed elsewhere, notably among the 
Australian blackfellows. M. Casalis pointed out fifty years ago the similarity 
between the practices and beliefs of the Bantu and the American natives. The 
object of the paper is to examine the Bantu practices and belief with a view to 
ascertaining :— 
1. How far they extend, and what evidence there is of their former existence 
where they are no longer to be found, 
2. Whether there is any essential difference between the Bantu practices and 
belief, and what is generally understood by totemism elsewhere. 
3. The process of decay, especially among the Eastern Bantu from the Zambesi 
southward. 
The conclusions arrived at are that though there is little in what is recorded 
of the Western Bantu which points directly to totemism, there is reason to think 
that it once generally prevailed among the Bantu; that its disappearance from the 
Western Bantu is due to contact with the true Negro along the west coast; that 
among the Hastern and Northern Bantu the decay of totemism is due to the 
change in the reckoning of kinship from reckoning through the mother ouly to 
reckoning through the father, and to the ancestor-worship which has arisen upon 
the new social basis thereby laid ; and that there is no essential difference between 
the Bantu practices and belief and what is generally recognised as totemism 
elsewhere. 
2. The Stone Age in South Africa, By L. Pirincuny. 
The author recognises two periods in South Africa. To the latter, which he 
terms ‘Recent, he ascribes all the implements found in the middens of the sea- 
coast as well as inland ; to the former the weapons or implements, often of a huge 
size, which partake so much of the facies of the paleolithic instruments met with 
in the laterite deposits of Madras or the Pyrenees that they are hardly distineuish- 
able, some of them weighing as much as 94 Ibs. and being 34 cm. long by 17 em. wide. 
It is contended that implements of that kind could not have been used by a small, 
puny race like that of the Bushmen, yet on the whole the author is of opinion that 
1 Lancet, August 12, 1905, p. 430, 
