338 NATURAL SCIENCE. May. 



" Decorative Art of New Guinea : as an Example of the Method of 

 Study," is an abridgment of Professor Haddon's own interesting 

 paper published in the " Cunningham Memoirs " by the Royal Irish 

 Academy, and gives the main points indicated in that monograph. 

 The remainder of the book, in which the classification is a prominent 

 feature, is mainly built up of quotations from various well-known 

 writers on the subject, such as Colley March, Stolpe, Holmes, 

 Gushing, Goodyear, and others, who have with great skill treated of 

 the various branches of the subject of Evolution in Art. The author 

 adds his own views where necessary, and at the end gives suggestions 

 as regards the scientific method of studying Art. His classification of 

 the various modes of origin of designs, and the ways in which they 

 become modified, will be found to be a useful one, as will also his 

 grouping of the various reasons for which objects are decorated. 



Some of the instances of "life-histories " of designs are very com- 

 plete and convincing; as, for instance, the phylogeny of the sabagomy, 

 or hook-like ornament of turtle-shell of the Torres Straits (Plate VI.). 

 " Fish-hooks (A) are used in pairs, being fastened at each end of a 

 piece of fine string, which, in its turn, is tied at its middle to the 

 fishing-line proper. When the piece of twine with its hooks was 

 thrown round a girl's neck, the two hooks would often hang down her 

 back shank to shank. Two sahagovar similarly arranged occur in the 

 British Museum collections. What more natural than that this 

 should be noticed, and to save the trouble of making two sabagovav, 

 a double one should be cut out of one piece of turtle-shell. The 

 more remotely from the fish-hook did the sabagorar vary, the larger it 

 became, and in some instances the double form became of consider- 

 able size, and the hook portion acquired a slight spiral curvature (K). 

 In one modified specimen the hooks are actually fused with the 

 shank (I). It will be also seen that divergent A-like processes often 

 occur on the sabagorar, but are never found on the fish-hook " 

 (pp. 76-78). 



In some cases resemblances are apt to mislead, and we think 

 that Professor Haddon is in error in suggesting (p. 231) that the 

 Burmese silver " shells " used as currency represent actual shells 

 once current as a medium of exchange. Although it is true that 

 actual shells have been, and are still so used in Burma, surely the 

 silver "shell "-money, so-called, is merely an accident of manufacture, 

 a condition brought about in the crucible, and attainable by the metal 

 only when of a certain degree of purity. The peculiar form, 

 undesigned in the first instance at any rate, is valued as a guarantee 

 of assay, and probably has no connection with the imitation of 

 natural shells. 



In dealing with what he calls " heteromorphs," that is, cases in 

 which a design is composed of an amalgamation of two or more 

 designs, Professor Haddon touches upon a cause of variation which 

 is frequently made too little of by writers and students of the histories 

 of art forms. It may safely be predicted that the greater number of 

 decorative designs will prove to be heteromorphs of a more or less 

 definite nature. The influence of one or more designs over another, 

 which tends to produce a new design partaking of the nature of each 

 parent, is very common, and renders the tracing of phylogenies a 

 complex and difficult pursuit. One is indisposed to regard hetero- 

 morphism as " a kind of disease which may attack " designs ; or to 

 class it under the heading " The Pathology of Decorative Art." It 

 is merely hybridisation, and, like that process in the animal kingdom, 

 is capable of producing noble and improved forms, while in contra- 



