TRIBES OF THE TANA VALLEY 
87 
forming a membrane is lost. This delicate and beautiful 
experiment very clearly shows that physiological impulses of 
the most profound importance pass across these protoplasmic 
bridges, by which the nucleus of one cell regulates the membrane- 
forming power of a protoplasmic mass from which the nucleus 
has been removed. 
THE TRIBES OF THE TANA VALLEY 
By A. Werner. 
The Tana Valley is the meeting-point of several different 
races, and therefore of peculiar interest from an ethnological 
point of view. Moreover, it is the dividing-line, for this part 
of Africa, between Bantu and non-Bantu, and an examination 
of the racial conditions as we find them to-day suggests a 
series of fascinating problems for the ethnologist. 
The Bantu tribe of the Wapokomo form, as is well known, 
the main population of the Tana Valley. They have been 
impinged upon, first from the north-east, afterwards from 
the south-west, by the Galla ; at a later date by the Somali 
from the north-east and the Masai from the south-west. 
(These last, whose advance is always checked by any great 
body of water, were stopped by the Tana in 1887, and seem 
since then to have fallen back and never recovered the lost 
ground.) And, scattered among them, in the forest on both 
banks of the river, are little groups of the hunter tribes — the 
Wasanye and Waboni. 
The Wapokomo are divided into thirteen tribes, each 
occupying a district named after it — though of late years there 
is a tendency for them to break up, fractions of some tribes 
settling within the districts of others : thus, there is a small 
colony of Buu people at Benderani, in the Ngatana district, 
and another of Bure (Ngatana) in the Kalindi district. 
