From the leaves of Phellolophium madagascariense Baker (Apiaceae), an endemic herb to Madagascar, three known coumarins (osthol, murraol and meranzin hydrate) have been isolated and identified. This is the first report of these compounds in this species. The structural elucidations were based on the analysis of physical and spectroscopic data. The anticancer activity of the three isolated compounds and of a synthetic sample of osthol was evaluated on L1210 mouse leukemia and on human prostatic cancer hormonosensitive LNCaP and hormonoindependent PC3 and DU145 cell lines.

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The modal auxiliary should, when it is used to express ‘probability’, is generally considered as a weaker equivalent of must (see for instance Leech & Svartvik, 1975: 131 and Hornby, 1962: 223). Although this informal assumption contains a fair degree of truth, this paper will show first, that it requires qualification and secondly, that it gains strength once it has been qualified. In other words, there is more truth in the assumption than is suspected by its casual users.The method I will use is to consider the compatibilities between must and should and their environment. Though the relevant kind of environment cannot be defined in a purely syntactic way, it can be accurately specified in simple semantic terms, many of which have syntactic correlates. Verbal contexts are generally available but situational contexts will occasionally have to be used. It will then appear that the diversity of situational contexts can be reduced to very few elementary relations.

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Strating with experiences originating in the main religions of salvation, one could tend to believe that pilgrimage is a constant factor within the anthropology of religions. However, such a belief is based more upon a particular inventory of the more or less `modern” times of the history of Europe and Asia than on a typical if not exhaustive knowledge of all religious traditions. There is a double question: does pilgrimage exist in the so-called archaic or traditional religions?; and is there everywhere a move to a sacred place, with performance of specific rites? The author produces some elements of an answer to both questions, based upon his knowledge of traditional Africa. Although this knowledge is only fragmentary, and restricted to Guinea and Togo, it is nevertheless possible to define some stimulating guidelines on the topic of pilgrimage within the framework of a conception of the universe which differs both from the traditional Christian perspective and from the space representation developed from Euclidean geometry. In Africa, gods and goddesses are carried away by people to areas where myths and rites may vary considerably from one place or group to another. Religions have predominantly commemorating, initiating or healing functions. The question is whether such a concept gives birth to so-called “memory places” analogous to the pilgrimage places familiar to our societies, and if one of the main objectives of religion was to dominate wide geographical areas by pinpointing sanctuaries.