Dans cet aperçu sur une tribu assez bien connue du Territoire de Stanleyville, dont les coutumes ancestrales ont été, jusqu'à présent, peu étudiées, je me limiterai à trois points principaux que j'examinerai dans l'ordre suivant: tout d'abord, l'origine présumée de cette peuplade et son installation à proximitè des Stanley-Falls; ensuite, quelques mots de leurs moyens de pêche très originaux, et enfin un exposé d'une parmi de nombreuses coutumes wagenia: la circoncision.

The wit and wisdom of the Fulani, as of other African peoples, are expressed most characteristically in their proverbs and riddles. Their proverbs are amply illustrated by the collections of H. Gaden and C. E. J. Whitting, and a selection of riddles appeared in a recent article in Africa by M. Dupire and the Marquis de Tressan. But there are other types of oral literature—both light and serious—which various writers have mentioned, without quoting examples. So Mlle Dupire refers to formes litteraires alambiquées and ritournelles des enfants bororo, and G. Pfeffer, in his article on ‘Prose and Poetry of the Fulbe,’ speaks of jokes and tongue-twisters. The aim of this article is to present some examples of these types of proverbial lore and word-play—epigrams, tongue-twisters, and chain-rhymes—which were recorded, along with many more riddles and proverbs, in the course of linguistic research during a recent tour of the Fula-speaking areas of West Africa, and to consider their relation to proverbs and riddles. These types of oral literature are of course by no means peculiar to the Fulani, and a number of the examples here quoted may well have parallels in other languages of West Africa or farther afield. But an examination of such pieces in one language may perhaps contribute something to the general study of this kind of lore.

Renzo Camignani ha stampato un libro di 67 pagine, edito da Collana di Studi Etnografici a Roma, nel 1954, sul Cannibalismo degli Asandè(o Niam Niam). Il termine esatto universalmente adottato sarebbe Azande.

L'Autore tratta la questione solo basandosi sulle diverse testimonianze di scrittori e viaggiatori, missionari e antropologi. Troppe testimonianze, forse, che, a volte, sono anche in se stesse contradittorie. L'Autore, dato il materiale che aveva, ha trattato la tesi brillantemente.

Filiberto Giorgetti ha pubblicato in questa rivista (vol. xxvii, no. 2, April 1957, pp. 178-86) un articolo su ‘II cannibalismo dei Niam-Niam’. Quel che ci riguarda di questo scritto è sopratutto la premessa, in quanto il Giorgetti prende spunto, per il suo assunto, da un nostro libro su Il Cannibalismo degli Asandè (o Niam-Niam), edito a Roma, nella Collana di Studi Etnografici, nel 1954.

The peoples of the Western world, and not a few Africans who have adopted some Western ideas, are apt to think that in matters of hygiene and preventive medicine the peoples of Nigeria owe all their useful practices solely to Western civilization, while the traditional theories and practices are merely superstitions. But in fact, when one analyses these, one finds interwoven with them correct principles of hygiene and preventive medicine. It is true that Nigeria owes a great deal to modern medicine, but had it not been for an existing foundation of practical hygiene and preventive medicine among Nigerian peoples, it would not have been possible for them to derive full benefit from modern practices.