This principle of numerous classes not based on sex distinctions, but each class having its distinctive particle and concord, is by no means confined to Bantu in Africa, but is shared by an important group of West African languages in Senegambia and Sierra Leone (Timne, etc.), and by Fula. Except that the Fula speech (with some allied groups between the Niger bend, the northern Gold Coast and Dahomé) is governed by suffixes instead of prefixes, it offers much resemblance in structure to the Bantu. Other prefix-governed languages (but without a distinct concord) have been found recently in Southern Kordofan. From some such direction as this the Bantu language-family—which in vocabulary, though not in syntax, bears signs of relationship with some of the Lower Niger languages—must have taken its origin in a region between the basins of the Nile, Congo, and Shari. It may have been called into existence in the moulding of a number of negro tribes by some semi-Caucasian invader, of which the Hima of the Victoria Nyanza basin, the Mañbettu and the Nyamnyam of the Bahr-al-Ghazal and Wele-Mubangi are vestiges. After a special development in the Mountain Nile basin, this language-type was carried all over the southern projection of Africa by a series of strenuous invasions proceeding west to the Cameroons, east to the shore of the Indian Ocean, and south over the Great Lakes region, Zambezia, and Congoland. Fula[5], a form of speech of cognate origin, was the language of the mysterious light-complexioned Fūl people who first came within the scope of world-history when they rose into power as a conquering Muhammadan nation of the Western Sudan (Senegambia and Upper Niger) in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Before that they had wandered more or less as a cattle-keeping gypsy-like folk, scattered over Nigeria from the basin of the Gambia and the Senegal to the confines of Bornu and the Shari river; to the Benue, to Nupe, Borgu, and Dahomé. According to Arab tradition they came into Senegambia originally from the Adrar country, far south of Morocco. Some of their own traditions derive them from Fezzan, south of Tripoli. Other slight indications lead us to suppose that they formerly dwelt in Morocco and Algeria as—quite possibly—the predecessors of the Libyans or Berbers, who will be dealt with presently. The nearest affinities of the Fulde or Fula speech at the present day are with the group of Mosi-Gurunsi negro tongues spoken at the back of Ashanti and of Togoland. There are also faint resemblances to Wolof, the language of the handsome black-skinned Jolofs of Senegal, a mixed race with an ancient Caucasian strain in their blood. In any case the pure Fula is a handsome hybrid type, obviously an early cross (in North Africa most likely) between the invading Caucasian of Europe and some ancient negro stock of North Africa. The purer types of Fula have a skin no darker than the average Berber, the face-features of a