Thus, the Vai do not distinguish the father’s sister from the mother, though the mother’s brother is designated by a distinct term from that for father and father’s brother. Further, the term for child is extended also to brother’s child by both sexes contrary to customary ‘forked’ usage. But this cannot be interpreted as symptomatic of the Hawaiian principle since the sister’s child is designated by a special word, which, moreover, differs for men and women speaking. The Vai nomenclature is interesting in showing once more that a given ‘system’ is a complex growth that cannot be adequately defined as a whole by some such catchword as ‘classificatory’, ‘Hawaiian’, or what not. Not only do we find Hawaiian and Dakota elements in the same system, but even purely descriptive combinations of primary terms. Thus, the designation of the sister’s daughter’s husband is manifestly composed of the stems for sister’s child and husband, and a corresponding juxtaposition of stems results in the term for mother’s sister’s husband. A similar phenomenon is presented by the terminology of the Timne, another Sierra Leone people. A superficial glance at the list suggests the Hawaiian principle: father’s brother and mother’s brother are grouped together, and so are the children of the maternal and the paternal aunt. But closer consideration shows that while uncles are classed together they are sharply separated from the father, that while aunts form a single group of _ntene_ the word for mother is _kara_ or _ya_, that there is no connection between the words for _Geschwister_ and cousins. In short, the Hawaiian generation principle does not apply. What Mr. Thomas’ schedules from eight tribes illustrate once more is the overwhelming importance of historical, geographical and linguistic considerations. A cursory examination of the lists shows that not only the mode of classifying kin but the words themselves are identical in a number of cases in two or more tribes. Thus, _mama_ is grandmother in Karanko, Susu, Vai and Mendi. It is surely no accident that all of these belong to the same prefixless subdivision of the Sudanese languages: the similarity is due to historical relations. In some cases an identical word is shared by members of distinct subdivisions. Thus, the father’s sister is called _ntene_ not only in the non-prefixing Susu and Koranko speech, but also in the prefixing language of the Timne. A glimpse at Mr. Thomas’ map shows, however, that the habitat of the Timne adjoins that of both of the other tribes; a kinship nomenclature is, in a measure, a function of geographical position.