Whether that was the original idea when the first person fell a victim to the Human Leopards may be questioned. Cannibalism is probably only a bye-product in these murders. Originally it may have been to bind the murderers together and so preserve inviolable secrecy that each member of the Society partook of a portion of the flesh; or it may have been to continue the leopard-acting, i.e. by devouring the prey; or it may have been with a combination of these ideas that cannibalism originated. Gradually, however, the notion arose that human flesh had specific virtues; as the Borfima’s energy was replenished with human fat so would the cannibal be reinvigorated with other parts of the human body; and possibly during the last few decades the value placed upon human flesh was equal to or even exceeded that set upon human fat. Such an explanation would help to account for the expansion and increased activity of the Society during the past twenty years. Then comes the question whether the punishments inflicted by the Special Commission Court will have the effect of stamping out the Society. In considering this question the environment of the people must be taken into account. I have been in many forests, but in none which seemed to me to be so uncanny as the Sierra Leone bush. In Mende-land the bush is not high, as a rule it is little more than scrub, nor is the vegetation exceptionally rank, but there is something about the Sierra Leone bush, and about the bush villages as well, which makes one’s flesh creep. It may be the low hills with enclosed swampy valleys, or the associations of the slave trade, or the knowledge that the country is alive with Human Leopards; but to my mind the chief factor in the uncanniness is the presence of numerous half-human chimpanzees with their maniacal shrieks and cries. The bush seemed to me pervaded with something supernatural, a spirit which was striving to bridge the animal and the human. Some of the weird spirit of their surroundings has, I think, entered into the people, and accounts for their weird customs. The people are by no means a low, savage race. I found many of them highly intelligent, shrewd, with more than the average sense of humour, and with the most marvellous faculty for keeping hidden what they did not wish to be known—the result probably of secret societies for countless generations. But beyond such reasoning powers as are required for their daily necessities their whole mental energies are absorbed in fetish, witchcraft, “medicine” such as Borfima and the like. What they need is a substitute for their bottomless wells of secret societies, for their playing at being leopards or alligators and acting the part with such realism that they not only kill their quarry but even devour it. In my opinion the only way to extirpate these objectionable societies is the introduction of the four R’s—the fourth, Religion, being specially needed to supply the place of the native crude beliefs. No doubt the