criticism of this portion of the work can be made by no one
but a philologist with a special knowledge of African languages. The
present reviewer does not possess these qualifications. Nevertheless
it is obvious to any student of Africa that the publication of this
work places a mine of useful information at the disposal of the
linguist, the grammarian, and the missionary, and will also be
invaluable to the student of African ethnology and to the physical
anthropologist.

The first chapter sketches the history of research into the Bantu
laguages. The contributions of various philosophists are appraised.

The second chapter on the distribution and character of the Bantu
languages is of greatest interest to the layman and to the general
anthropologist. We are informed that the Bantu languages "constitute
a very distinct type of speech which, as contrasted with others
amongst the group of Negro tongues, is remarkable as a rule for
Italian melodiousness, simplicity and frequency of its vowel sounds,
and the comparative ease with which its exemplars can be acquired and
spoken by Europeans" (p. 15). "This one Negro language family now
covers the whole of the southern third of Africa, with the exception
of very small areas in the southwest (still inhabited sparsely by
Hottentot and Bushman tribes) and a few patches of the inner Congo
basin" (p. 15). Throughout Africa, north of the Bantu border line, the
traveller meets with numerous languages widely different and mutually
incomprehensible whereas with a knowledge of one Bantu language it is
not difficult to understand the structure and even the vocabulary of
others. The importance of this language family in Africa is therefore
obvious. The author defines clearly the special and peculiar
characteristics of Bantu languages. There follows an interesting
discussion of the origin and spread of these languages. Probably the
parent speech was spoken originally in the very heart of Africa,
somewhere between the basins of the Upper Nile, the Bahr-al-ghazal,
the Mubangi, and the Upper Benue. The archaic Bantu seem first to have
moved eastward, toward the Mountain Nile and the Great Lakes. Probably
they remained in the Nile Valley north of the Albert Nyanza "till at
least as late as three or four hundred years before Christ--late
enough to have been in full possession of goats and oxen and to have
received the domestic fowl from Egypt or Abyssinia. They then embarked
upon their great