The inhabitants of Africa have been divided into six great races. Their languages form the basis of such division. Mr. R. N. Cust, the Secretary of the Royal Asiatic Society, has recently published a valuable work on the Languages of Africa, and the coloured map accompanying it presents the distribution of races very graphically to the eye. To the north we find the Semitic race. In the Sahara, on the Nile, in Abyssinia and in Somali land, a Hamitic race, speaking languages allied to Ethiopic. From Gambia to the mouths of the Niger the Negro race, of whom the Ashantees are types. Interspersed among the Negro and Hamitic races are detached peoples, speaking languages of the Nuba Fullah group, of whom the Masai, among whom Mr. Thomson has been travelling, to the east of the Victoria Nyanza, may be taken as types. To the south of all these is the great Bantu (= men) race. A line drawn eastward from the Gulf of Biafra to the Indian Ocean will mark roughly the boundary of this greatest of the African races. Near to the Cape of Good Hope are found the Hottentot Bushman, a degraded race, who appear to have been the aborigines, but now driven to the remotest corner, are still yielding to the stronger Bantus. It is surmised that some dwarf races, said to be scattered through the Bantu countries, may be of this aboriginal stock, but no satisfactory opportunities have yet offered for ascertaining the truth. These dwarfs are always a little beyond the countries visited by travellers, a few specimens, said to belong to them, have been seen, but their country is ever elusive. It is likely that they may prove to be degraded tribes of the races among whom they dwell, just as the Niam Niams are believed to be Nuba-Fullahs. Of the Bantus the Zulu Kaffirs may be the best known types, although they have borrowed from the Hottentots the clicks that so much disfigure their language. With the exception of these hypothetical dwarfs, the inhabitants of the Congo basin are all Bantus.