380 A NATUEALIST ON THE "CHALLENGER." 



Pityriasis versicolor. Dr. Crosbie, Staff-Surgeon of the " Chal- 

 lenger," made a careful microscopical examination of it. The 

 disease is widely spread in Melanesia and Polynesia.* 



The men kept constantly scratching themselves violently, 

 and life can be hardly worth having in Great Ke Island. Yet 

 the disease is one easilv cured. After all, the natives are no 

 worse off than were Cambridge under-graduates in the middle 

 of the seventeenth century, and they used to be nearly 

 physicked to death into the bargain, absolutely in vain.f 



The men begged for all kinds of things, and especially spirits 

 and tobacco. One of the boats had well-made pottery, nicely 

 ornamented with patterns in red, for barter. The men, as did 

 also the Malays at Dobbo, used a slight click with the tongue, 

 accompanied by a very slow shaking of the head, to express 

 astonishment. 



We anchored off Little Ke Island. Several boats came off 

 paddling to a different but very similar chant. The men being 

 ship-builders by profession, were delighted with the ship, and 

 ran all over it and climbed into the rigging. 



A dance was got up on the quarter-deck. The drum was 

 beaten by two performers and a song accompanied it, but there 

 was no clapping of hands, as in Fiji. The whole mode of danc- 

 ing was absolutely different, and the attitudes of the dancer were 

 sufficient alone to have told one that one was amongst Malays 

 and not Melanesians or Polynesians. 



The dance, in which only two or three performers danced at 

 a time, consisted of a very slowly executed series of poses of the 

 body and limbs. There was no exact keeping of time to the 

 accompaniment nor unison of action between the dancers. The 

 hands and arms during the action were slowly moved from 

 behind to the front, the palms being held forwards and the 

 thumbs stretched straight out from them. 



In another dance a motion, as of pulling at a rope, was used. 

 The chant to one dance was the words " uela a uela." There 



* See Tilbury Fox, M.D., " On the Tokelau Ringworm and its Fungus." 

 The "Lancet," 1874. p. 304. 



t John Strypes' " Letters to his Mother, Scholse Academical," p. 293. 

 Christopher "Wordsworth, Cambridge, 1872. 



