The Spider, who on the Guinea Coast is the principal figure in the animal stories, is, so far as I know, almost absent from Bantu folk-lore. One exception I have already referred to, in a Yao creation-myth; in another Yao tale he crosses a stream and makes a bridge for a chief to escape from his enemies. Here, however, he does not take a specially prominent part, being only one of four helpers provided by the spirit of the chief’s elder brother. The Spider is very prominent in the folk-lore of the Duala, who have probably borrowed him from their western neighbours. We have mentioned that the natives see nothing strange in men assuming the forms of animals—they believe that it happens every day. Their stories give us many instances of the converse process—animals taking human shape whenever it suits them. Thus a girl marries a lion who has turned himself into a man, and, finding out his real nature, runs away from him. Another I give as I have it written down. ‘A person (a girl) refused (all) men; there came a baboon; he took off the skin from his body and was turned into a man. The Angoni woman married the baboon, and he hoed the crops, and his companions came from the Bush and ate the crops of his mother-in-law’s garden, and (so) he went (with them) into the Bush.’ But a better example still is that of the ‘Girl and the Hyena,’ which Mr. Macdonald thinks is intended as a warning to girls not to be too fastidious in their choice of husbands, and to accept those first suggested to them, lest worse befall. It might equally well be a warning against marrying a stranger from a distance, and certainly shows the tie between brother and sister in a very pleasing light. Here it is, as told me by Katembo at Blantyre. ‘There was a woman who refused all husbands, and at last there came a hyena, and she said, “I want this one.” (So they were married), and the husband said, “My wife, let us go home.” Her brother, who had sore eyes, followed after them, and she (saw him and) said, “Where are you going?” The brother crouched down and hid in the grass, and when they were out of sight he followed them again, till he came to the village. When his sister found he was there, she hid him in the hen-coop. When it was quite dark, a number of hyenas came outside the hut and sang: “Here is meat, we will eat it; but it is not fat enough yet.” ‘The girl was asleep, but her brother heard them, and as soon as it was light he went and told her that they meant to eat her. She would not believe it, so he told her to tie a string to her little finger that night before she went to sleep, and leave the end outside the hut, so that he could take it with him into the chicken-house. In the middle of the night the hyenas came again, and, when he heard them, he pulled the string and woke his sister; so she, too, heard them singing: “Here is meat, we will eat it; but it is not fat enough yet.”