Nankana, Bobo, Sissala; Upper Nile tribes: Shilluk, Alur, Nuer, Gollo; East Africans: Wasandaui, Anyanja, Wabemba). Only in a few tribes are the functions reversed, but with the Indikku, Bageshu, and Wagago, the man places the seed in a hole made by the woman.

At harvest, work is often divided by the men digging up the roots or cutting the corn and the women carrying them in. But the division may also be effected, as is clearly the case in the Western Sudan (Grussi, Mande-Dyula, Mossi, Tim, Munshi), by the man doing the heavier work of cutting the corn, and the woman removing the ears from the stalks he has cut down. In the harvesting of roots, a popular division of work assigns the loosening of the soil round the root to the man, and the lifting out to the woman. We know that among the Munshi the men dig up the old yams and the women the young ones. Where cultivation is undertaken by both sexes the woman almost always helps with the harvest. Many tribes make her do it alone with the children, but in a few accounts the harvest is spoken of as exclusively men's work.

In order to get a deeper insight into the respective relations to the processes of cultivation, it is important to know the crops preferred or disliked by the sexes. Each one has its specialities, and it is particularly important to find out whether the man or the woman cultivates the crop chiefly grown, and whether the man grows the root crops and the woman the grain or vice versa. It may be laid down as a general rule, at least for Africa, that the oldest roots (especially the colocasia) and the newest grains (especially maize) are cultivated by the women, though there are, of course, also some interesting exceptions. The woman nearly always grows the kitchen vegetables and spices (gourds, onions, pepper, 'okro', and the like), generally in a little garden by her house. This woman's garden by the house is extremely characteristic of primitive as well as modern horticulture. It is to be found everywhere in the Sudan beside the fields tilled by both sexes, and likewise in West Africa where women alone cultivate the soil. The women of the Bakwese on the Kwango even grow in this garden, manioc, millet, and maize, the main crops in districts of weak soil culture. Similarly we find the Mabea in the Cameroons (134, p. 18) 1 Torday, 137, 1907, p. 147.

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even have maize, ground nuts, makabo, and sugar cane in their gardens, while on the farms manioc and plantains are raised. The men will never cultivate kitchen vegetables alone. Among the Konde, a man who has no female relatives (37, p. 343) will rather forego eating beans, maize, peas, and the like, than grow them himself. Also the cultivation of cotton in the Western Sudan largely falls to the women, for instance, among the Mendi (Alldridge), Siena (Delafosse), FutaDjalon (Arcin), Habbe (Desplages), and others.

On the other hand, the care of the fruit trees and collecting of their fruit is generally men's work, being the natural continuation of the exploitation of certain kinds of trees formerly practised in the higher collecting stage of culture. The banana plantations of the Congo forest (Lessa, Wangata), South Cameroons (Bakwiri, Keaka), and the inter-lake districts (Basoga, Baziba, Bahaya, Bagesu, and others), are entirely or partly managed by men, while the women do the rest of the field work, and grow the corn, manioc, yams, and colocasia. Men also cultivate the sugar cane, made into intoxicating beverages (central Congo basin), and, at least in some places, tobacco, which is used as a narcotic. This latter is, however, also grown by women in many districts (including Futa-Djalon, Habbe). Most important, however, is the position of the sexes with regard to the root crops which are now generally considered to be the most ancient cultivated plants, since their simple method of propagation (by slips) must have been most easily grasped by the women. In America the manioc, in the South Seas and in Africa, the yam and taro (colocasia) are the oldest known root crops. We now understand why yams and taro are in Africa cultivated by women to a greater extent than millet. The manioc was a newly introduced crop, which Africa owes to the New World and which flourished especially in the hot Congo forest. It is only natural that it was there adopted by women. The same is true of maize, which is fairly easily acclimatized, and is almost always grown by women, often in their little gardens. The taro root (colocasia, coco-yam) is definitely a women's crop. Not only is it, among the Dchagga in East Africa, accounted the oldest plant cultivated by women, but also in West Africa, particularly in Southern Nigeria (Talbot), the 'coco-yam' is considered a typical

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women's crop, while the farther west we go while the farther west we go the yam, as we shall see below, is already beginning to fall into the hands of the men. In Futa-Djalon (Arcin, 3, pp. 73 ff.) the taro is now only grown in the women's garden by the house. At first sight, however, it seems curious that in one part of West Africa, which we again perceive to be the zone of strong Sudanese influence, between Liberia and the Lower Niger, the yam has been adopted by the men as their main crop. Consequently it is here cultivated intensively. The making of yam heaps, digging round the thick roots, and fixing the stakes require much careful attention and can only be carried on in such intensive form where, owing to Sudanese influence, the men do the work. Spieth has included in his monograph on the Ewe (see bibliography) excellent pictures and descriptions of this intensive yam cultivation (especially pp. 55, 764 ff., 706, 336 ff.). A few cases of special interest may be mentioned here. It may happen, as among the Tim, who belong to the yam zone referred to above, that almost the whole work of corn growing is left to the women (36, p. 151). Among the Siena (Senufo) the man sows and harvests the millet and sets the yams, but the woman sows and harvests the maize and harvests the yams. Here the oldSudanese millet culture of the men is confronted by the new maize culture, which has almost everywhere been undertaken by the women. In this district on the border of the yam zone, the yam is in an intermediate position. (The men and women of the Mande-Dyula tribe still undertake the harvesting and sowing of the yam together.) Maize is also a women's crop among the Grussi (Kasonbura, Nunuma), Mossi-Fulsi (Tauxier), Futa-Djalon tribes (according to Arcin in the women's gardens, 3, pp. 73 ff.), North Guro (Tauxier), and among tribes in Southern Nigeria (Talbot). Almost everywhere in the Sudan and East Africa maize is cultivated by men, though in a few places one of the many varieties is handed over to the women. This does not, however, prevent millet from being regarded as the typical men's crop, while-a fact which bears out the theory that at the time of the old exclusively female hoe culture root crops were mainly grown-yams and colocasia are cultivated by women.

Finally, an important point in the problem of the division of work is the question of whether slavery exists and what effect it has on the

organization. There are two principal cultural groups which use slave labour in soil cultivation. First, we have those peoples among the 'highly-cultured' tribes of Africa who belong to the new-Sudanese or Zambezi zone of civilization; here often entire subject tribes serve the ruling class, doing field work like slaves.' But there exists also, in less extreme cases, a form of household slavery, which enables the women to be helped in their field work by slaves. Where cultivation is very intensive, men also work with the slaves instead of the women (the sex of the slaves is hardly taken into consideration in the work). Men and slaves work together among the Nupe (Frobenius), Susu (Godal), Wangoni (Fülleborn), and Senaar (Tremaux); women and slaves share the field work among the Wahehe (Schele), Kalunda (Pogge), round about Tete on the Zambezi (Livingstone), Bafioti (Pechuel-Lösche), Mangbetu (Casati), Nzakara (Duke of Mecklenburg), and others. On the West African coast also, particularly along the curve of Biafra Bay, a form of household slavery prevails, which is closely related to the cultivation of the soil. Here women and slaves nearly always work together, as among the Ininga (Lenz), Shekiani (Du Chaillu), Mpongwe (Gray in Weitz' statement), and Mbenga (Duloup) on the Gabun River, among the Bakundu-Batom (Hutter), Banyangi, Efik, Uyo (Talbot), Ewe-Keve (Klose), and Neyau (Thomann). This last group of tribes is so characteristically placed in the district of the old slave trade, that we cannot be dealing with a form of society typically native in origin, which might show us some kind of higher hoe culture, similar to that of the free-matriarchal or bow civilization with their slave labour. Moreover, the agriculture of these peoples hardly differs in essentials from that of the other West Africans.

To sum up, we may say that with regard to the problems of the origin of primitive hoe culture and of the women's part in its invention, a certain amount of evidence is to be found in Africa, evidence of a kind which is essentially, with few limitations, calculated to confirm the information which social history affords us on the subject.

1 As examples may be mentioned the Azande on the Upper Welle, whose ruling class, the Avungara, only engage in hunting (Hutereau, 47, pp. 13 ff.), or the Batuana-Bechwana in the Okavango valley, who force their subject tribes to work in the fields (148, 1905, p. 704).

This is true not only of the theory that the cultivation of root crops associated with female culture is the most ancient, but also of the connexion of the latter with matriarchy. As in Polynesia, where the newer native hoe culture is bound up with a patriarchal form of society and male field work, so we can show a newer hoe culture in Africa operated by men, and a corresponding patriarchal social system. I have tried to prove, basing my argument on the character of its accompanying patriarchy, that this form of hoe culture in Africa is fairly ancient in date, in spite of the undeniable fact that its exponents must have adopted it at an earlier date from the older hoe culture carried on by women. Many statements which to-day still sound hypothetical may perhaps be better proved when those who are now actually at work on the spot have given us fuller accounts of the results of their research than unfortunately have hitherto been available. HERMANN BAUMANN