G. THE .NILOTIC BRANCH. It begins with the Naba, south of Egypt, comprises the isolated remnants of the Barea and Kuuama languages at the northern frontier of Abyssinia, and runs west of Abyssinia and of the Galla country down to the Albert Lake. where the Madi and Shuli form its last representatives. It is quite dis tinct from the Bantu (beginning in Unyoro). The Masai or Oigob are an isolated advance guard in the southwest. The principal repre sentatives in the Nile Valley are the Dinka, Shil Ink, and Bari. The line of demarkation west of the Nile is difficult to trace; with the Bongo and Itagrimma, the Nilotic passes over into the perplexing mass of the fourth group. F. Midler called the sixth the Nuba-Fulah branch, but the very peculiar Ful language is best treated as a perfectly isolated phenomenon. It seems to have some points of similarity with the Hamitic (on which points Schleicher and Krause have laid exaggerated stress), and may be one of those odd blendings of different languages, defying all rules of linguistics, of which Africa furnishes various examples (e.g., the Musgu or Muzuk).
Its position among the Nilotic languages is far from being certain. Anthropologically, the tribes speaking the languages embraced in this class are for the most part pure Negroes, though some of them may have an admixture of Hamitie blood.
7. THE EQuAzortru. FAMILY. Later ( F. Muffler attempted to make of a group of lan guages, which lie had at first classed with the fifth family, a special branch, which he called the Equatorial family. The languages compos ing this branch are spoken by tribes south of Darfur; aiming them the Niam-Niam (or A-sande) and Monbuttn (or Mangbattu) are the most important. As was said above, the great fifth group contains a number of families in regard to which it is hard to determine whether they are independent branches or merely sub divisions of the general group. Most of the equatorial tribes belong rather to a light Negro type.
The INIalagasy language, spoken on the island of Madagascar, belongs to the Malay family of speech. By reason of its geographical position it need not he considered here.