218 WILLIAM HENRY HARVEY 



mid-Pacific. The fringing reef proved somewhat disappointing, 

 for amid the multitudinous and many-coloured animal forms only 

 a few green Algae were to be found. Harvey spent six months 

 in the Pacific, visiting island after island according as the mission 

 boats supplied a means of transport, collecting seaweeds and a 

 good many marine animals. At that time social conditions in 

 the South Seas were very different from what they are now. 

 The adjoining Fiji Island group, for instance, was still in a 

 savage state : the captain of the mission vessel told Harvey 

 how, only four years before, he had seen one hundred human 

 bodies laid out for a great feast, and cannibalism was still a 

 habitual practice there ; but the Friendly Islands, though but 

 recently in a similar condition, seem already to have deserved 

 their name, and Harvey's experiences of the natives, with whom 

 he was much in contact, appear to have been of the pleasantest 

 description ; in Fiji also, where several weeks were spent, the 

 founding of a Christian mission (permitted only two years before 

 after eighteen years' refusal) had already greatly altered local 

 practices ; devil-worship and cannibalism were rapidly dying 

 out. Harvey, applying at the mission station for a responsible 

 guide, was furnished with a man entitled " Koroe," which, it 

 appeared, was an honourable title " something equivalent to a 

 C.B. in England," and bestowed only on a person who had com- 

 mitted at least five murders. Harvey returned to Sydney, and 

 thence to Europe by Valparaiso and Panama, having a severe 

 bout of fever on the way. He reached home in October, 1856, 

 after an absence of over three years. 



Here an important change of life awaited him. G. J. Allman 

 succeeded to the Natural History chair in Edinburgh, rendered 

 vacant by the death of Edward Forbes, and Harvey was elected 

 to the chair in Trinity College, Dublin, the difficulties which led 

 to his rejection twelve years earlier being not raised on this 

 occasion, though the law remained the same. At the same time, 

 the incorporation of the several Dublin Society professorships 

 in the newly founded Museum of Irish Industry (now the Royal 

 College of Science for Ireland), gave him additional work, as his 

 post was converted into a Natural History and Economic chair. 

 However, the considerable increase of lecturing and teaching 



