We have, with the deepest regret, to record the death on 10 October 1949 of Professor Ida Ward after a short but severe illness. Most members of the Institute have long been aware of the great services she has rendered to it in the field of linguistic studies. Not only has she made an outstanding academic contribution, of which Professor Diedrich Westermann writes below; she also worked tirelessly for the fuller appreciation in every quarter of the importance of linguistic studies and the development of vernacular literature for research, education, and social development in Africa. Her lively, shrewd, patient and, above all, kindly personality attracted the interest and co-operation of all concerned, either scientifically or practically, with African languages. Scholars, administrators, and teachers of every country warmed to the quiet determination, measured enthusiasm, and great fairmindedness with which she would present or discuss new developments and opportunities. As Chairman of the Institute's Linguistic Advisory Committee and a member, since 1947, of its Executive Council, Professor Ida Ward gave us invaluable service. All who met and worked with her in committees and conferences in Europe and America, and especially in Africa itself, know well that she embodied in a quite exceptional way our aspirations and scientific standards in the linguistic field, and was for us an ambassador of great value. Her trim, frail presence radiated goodness and common sense as well as high originality of mind. Although she had retired a year previously from her University Chair she was contributing as actively as before to the Institute's work. In his address at a memorial service held in London on 15 October, Professor Turner, Director of the School of Oriental and African Studies, with which she had been so long associated, expressed feelings which we in the Institute fully share, recalling Professor Ward as a great and good woman. Her name is already established in the roll of great women who have done much for Africa.

Professor Ida C. Ward, until 1948 head of the African Department of the School of Oriental and African Studies in the University of London, was equally eminent as a teacher and researcher; she had lectured in many European universities and her distinguished gifts were known and appreciated in Europe and America. It is largely through her work and her personality that the African Department of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, has become a world-famous institution in the field of African linguistics. Her name will forever be connected with the study of African languages, and in particular of African tone languages. It was the function of tone in West African languages on which her work centred, and her achievements in this difficult and delicate field have initiated a new phase in our knowledge of African speech. Hers was the unfailing ear, the keen observation of sound-production and the art of reproducing foreign sounds and new sound-sequences, which make the true phonetician. What gave her work such fullness of life and actuality was its intimate linking with practical language study. It may be said that many of her important discoveries were the immediate outcome of her teaching. Teaching, practising, and researching were to her an indissoluble unit. ‘The practical depends on the scientific, for one can never tell what practical problems—or solutions of problems—will be thrown up by meticulous scientific analysis’, and ‘on the other hand, the practical application of scientific research keeps the researcher within bounds, as it were, and will not allow him too far into the realms of conjecture and theorising’. She was an ideal and enthusiastic teacher, never tiring, never losing patience. A group consisting of herself, an African assistant, and a small cluster of students was her ideal; here all were partners in the same aim, and all took an active part in the subject discussed.

Cette étude des pêcheurs itinérants sorkawa du Moyen-Niger fait partie d'un travail général sur les pêcheurs du Niger. C'est le résultat d'enquêtes menées à deux reprises sur le terrain, en 1946-1947 au cours de la descente du Niger en pirogue de sa source à la mer, et en 1948-1949 au cours de séjours parmi les pêcheurs sorkawa en campagne de pêche au Niger français.

Il est difficile de séparer les Sorkawa du reste de la caste des pécheurs sorko de la population songhay, desquels ils sont issus et dont ils ont conservé un grand nombre de traditions. Mais en fait, la situation géographique, historique et ethnique des Sorkawa, leurs manières de vivre et de penser en font un groupe très à part.

This paper presents a preliminary account of the results of field research among the Teita, a tribal group not previously studied. It aims at giving a survey of the main structural features of the Teita tribal system and of the genealogical groupings within it. I hope to devote a separate article to a study of residential relations as cohesive factors within the tribal structure.

In the French Cameroons, West Africa, live the Bamum whose population is estimated at about 75,000. Their territory is bounded on the north by that of the British Trusteeship territory of the Cameroons. Their western and south-western boundaries are formed by the River Nun, while the Rivers Mape (a tributary of the Mbam) and the Mbam form its eastern boundaries. The tribe consists of a recent ruling group of Tikar who, migrating from Rifum—now called Bamkin—settled among other Tikar whose social and political organization was of the lineage type so common in West Africa. This ruling group, who claim to have come originally from the environs of Bornu, rapidly conquered the surrounding independent, uncentralized, local villages and created the powerful Bamum kingdom which withstood Fulani raids.

This article is concerned with tribal ideas on insanity among the Bemba of the Northern Province of Northern Rhodesia.

Dr. Alan Gregg, the Director of Medical Services Division of the Rockefeller Foundation, states that ‘Psychiatry as the study of disordered conduct is intimate to an almost suspicious degree with ethics, with cultural anthropology, with sociology, with metaphysics, with religion, with artistic activities . . . ’, and adds that many mental disorders are ‘often discernible only in terms of the patient's relationships with other human beings in some given intellectual or cultural or social or moral system’. He thus definitely emphasizes the necessity of studying the sociological background of the insane patient when cures are attempted.

The Swahili people are unique among the Bantu of East Africa in possessing an heritage of written literature of considerable range and antiquity. The earliest reasonably authentic examples consist of mashairi, song-poems, attributed to Liongo Fumo, prince of Ozi, c. A.D. 1150–1200. Many of the well-known mashairi were impromptu compositions of the minstrels who vied with one another at the songtourneys.

The Bibliography section of this Journal shows an increasing number of books which, whether written in African vernaculars or in English, are intended primarily to be for Africans rather than about Africans; and an increasing proportion are written by Africans. ‘Notes and News’ items mention Publications Bureaux to encourage African authors and arrange the production and distribution of books. Something is going on in Africa which may be of importance for the artistic and social life of the people, something more important than the formation of new Departments of Government. This article attempts to make a provisional assessment of what is going on; to consider the aims and functions of organizations for promoting African literature, and to arrive at some general principles; to get the work of these Publications (or Literature) Bureaux in perspective. It is based on experience in Northern Rhodesia and Nyasaland, experience over some length of time, but perhaps rather parochial. The Government, while providing funds from Development and Welfare accounts, has happily avoided laying down any set of rules for the working of these Bureaux. A great deal of valuable guidance—all the more valuable for being brilliantly informal—was given to workers in Africa for many years by Margaret Wrong. The writer of this article has had the opportunity of seeing something of the work of the East Africa Literature Bureau and of discussion with Mr. C. G. Richards; these discussions discovered a surprising and pleasing range of independent agreement on principles to be followed (and misconceptions to be cleared) in East and Central Africa; some differences in conditions and therefore in suitable attack; and the need for more liaison.