Notes on a Skull of the Troglodytes Niger. 48 
erected ; it is left open at one end, and in it the valuables of the 
deceased are placed — his furniture, clothes, utensils, and food. 
These, however, are shortly after, more or less damaged or 
broken, for one of two reasons, if not for both — either to kill 
the articles themselves (for in Calabar all things are supposed 
to possess life), that their spirits may go to benefit the spirit 
of the deceased,-— or, to prevent people from sacrilegiously 
stealing them. The whole being intended as an offering to the 
fetish, or evil spirit, and left as sacred to the memory of the 
deceased. As in other parts of Heathendom, an evil spirit is 
worshipped, as well as a good spirit ; and fear, which is the 
moving principle of their worship, naturally makes more re- 
spect be paid to the bad than to the good, the vengeance of the 
former being most feared, and therefore greater pains are taken 
to propitiate his anger. The principal fetish, or evil spirit, 
worshipped in the houses of Old Calabar is, strange to say, a 
human skull without the lower jaw, which is tied by bands of 
plaited leaves, crossing one another, to the top of a thick block 
of wood, the upper part of the rounded stem of which is also 
wrapped about with bands of plaited leaves or thongs. Dr 
Sommerville kindly showed me one of these in his possession. 
We may therefore suppose this skull of the T. niger had been 
offered as a highly valued propitiatory offering to the fetish, 
if not also worshipped as the representative of the much-feared 
fetish or evil spirit itself in the home of the man from above 
whose grave it was taken. 
Crania of the two species of Chimpanzee are described by 
Professor Owen in the Transactions of the Zoological Society 
of London. Captain Wagstaff, who brought them to Bristol, 
stated that the natives, when they succeed in killing one of 
these Chimpanzees (the gorilla), make a fetish of the cranium. 
The specimens bore indications of the sacred marks in broad red 
stripes, crossed by a white stripe, Avhich could be washed off. 
Their superstitious reverence of these hideous remains of their 
formidable and dreaded enemy adds to the difficulty which a 
stranger has to contend with in procuring specimens." This 
quotation shows how general is the feeling of superstitious 
dread which appears to exist with regard to these Chimpanzees, 
creatures, which of all the lower animals, in their structure 
and general appearance, make the nearest approach to man. 
