Dans la société bushoong existent quatre institutions fondées sur la parenté: le clan matrilinéaire, la section de clan, la famille étendue mixte et la famille nucléaire. Cette dernière est la plus importante du point de vue des fonctions qu'elle remplit et de l'intensité des rôles sociaux qu'elle impose à ses membres. Nous décrivons ici ses caractéristiques, ses fonctions, le réseau des rôles sociaux qu'elle régit et enfin ses rapports avec les trois autres institutions citées.

The distribution of raffia cloth among the Lele raises two questions. One, mainly ethnographic, is that of the various functions served in the course of its circulation from hand to hand. In answering this, the second question arises. In some aspects raffia cloth seems to perform monetary roles. Is it to be classed as a type of primitive money? In the widest sense it seems to be an imperfect type of money, performing in a restricted manner some of the main functions of money: it acts as a store and a standard of value; it is given as payment for services and sometimes used as a medium of exchange. It is not, however, the principal, or usual, means of distribution in the economy. I hope that a discussion of the short-comings of Lele raffia as a form of money may be interesting to others working in societies which are similarly on the verge of a market economy.

Some years ago the Rev. Fr. Nicolas discussed the problem of the term ‘Gurunsi’ in this journal. He argued that it should be abolished on the grounds that it was inadequate and furthermore derogatory to the tribes in question. He wrote (pp.170-1): ‘Tout un groupe de populations de la Volta Noire est désigné par un ethnique pluriel: Gourounsi, ou son singulier: Gourounga. . . . Et ce qui est le comble de l'anomalie, ces appellations . . . sont unanimement répudiées par toutes les confédérations de ce groupement, parce que toujours perçues par elles comme denigrantes sinon comme injurieuses.) A year later he again discussed the question in the Introduction to his Glossaire L'élé-Français (p. 136) : ‘. . . ce sous-groupe ne devrait pas être dit “gourounsi” car cet ethnique pluriel ne convient qu'à une seule tribu du groupe Moaya qui seule le reconnaît comme sien et le porte donc volontiers . . .’ The tribe referred to is the Nankanse, and the source of his information is Rattray. It may therefore be of some interest to discuss once more the question of the term ‘Gurunsi’ or ‘Grusi’

The Methodist Church in Ghana, in common with all the missionary-implanted Churches in the area, strongly reflects its Western origins: its organization and polity, its worship and discipline, and its ethos are manifestly those of the British Methodism which gave it birth. Methodist institutions have been present in parts of Ghana, particularly in the coastal strip, for over a century and have thereby become part of the social and religious landscape; but whether they are related to it or rooted in the soil has been seriously questioned. It is therefore all the more notable that within this implanted institutional framework typically Ghanaian attitudes seek expression, and that in one direction at least a Fante cultural form has found an honoured place within the Church's life. This is the Fante lyric.

Moča is a dialect of the Kafa cluster, in the south-west of Ethiopia. It is spoken in the province of Ilubabor, to the west of Kafa, extending north across the river Baro. The language is called Šäkka by the Moča themselves; the term Moča is used by the Galla and by the Europeans.

The dialects of the Kafa cluster are: Kafa spoken in the province of Kafa, between the rivers Omo and Goǧeb to the north and the Gimira tribes to the south; Boša (or Garo) spoken to the north of the river Goǧeb, and west of Omo; and Moča.

The Gbaya languages are treated in the third part of the recently published volume of the series, Handbook of African Languages. In this work they are held to represent a dialect cluster (a single unit) within the larger unit, the Banda-Gbaya-Ngbandi languages. In thus uniting these linguistic groups, Tucker and Bryan agree at least in part with Greenberg, who includes them as well as some other languages within his Eastern Branch of the Niger-Congo Family. On the other hand, they do not go as far as Greenberg does on the ground that ‘the divergent features of these languages [i.e. those included by Greenberg in the Eastern Branch] would seem to be sufficient to exclude some of them from this “branch”, and possibly to allocate them to other branches . . .’. They therefore ‘feel that Greenberg's “Eastern Branch” grouping cannot be justified (still less the order of his items), except on the grounds of geographical expediency’ (Tucker and Bryan, p. 146).