religious turn of mind, offer to the father, all, or nearly all, the game they procure, and if women and children are left hungry they can at least admire the fervent piety of husbands and fathers. It is only the skulls of men, not of women, that are used by the Secret Society. But the spirits of women return after death, like those of men, and frequently become very troublesome. On Corisco Island there lives a man who has been in contact with civilization all his lifetime and is fairly educated though he is not a Christian. His wife died; and shortly afterwards she began playing pranks in his town and even in his house. She broke nearly all his dishes. Then, one night, she struck him in the neck, and he instantly recognized her. His neck was stiff in the morning. That proved it! Not being able to strike back in this unequal warfare and preferring an enemy whom he could kick (for this individual wore shoes and scarcely anything else) he lost spirit and finally pulled down the entire town and built in another place. Women and children never possess the skulls of ancestors. The power of the ancestor is more often used against women than others. Among the Mpongwe and some other tribes a woman may worship her ancestors; for which purpose she uses not skulls but wooden images, which she never exhibits. The African conception of nature may be inferred from what we have said of their view of God and their worship of ancestors. God having made the world seems to take no more interest in it. Other spirits innumerable control it and continually interfere with its normal operations. Since there is no single intelligence ever present and presiding it follows that there is no uniformity in nature and no reign of law. Those phenomena which attract the African’s attention he ascribes immediately to a supernatural cause. He does not look for a natural cause. If a tree falls across his path, somebody threw it. The activity of spirits accounts for everything. There is no line between nature and the supernatural; miracles are always happening. The causes of natural phenomena being supernatural are also inscrutable. The study of nature and the investigation of her laws is precluded by this conception.