742 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



venerable, beautiful, and ugly monsters in art, so endeared by childish 

 memories and fears ? United to and supported by ignorance and blind 

 belief, they stood as truths in the infancy of the race ; separated from 

 these, and subjected to the light of reason and knowledge, they fall 

 from our acceptance as beliefs, and from the highest sphere of art, 

 tvhere nature and truth should henceforth be the grand aims of the 

 artist. 



Should any object that following strictly the laws of nature will 

 have a tendency to lower the aspirations of the artist, we may refer to 

 a sister science in defense of our position. The signs of the times have 

 convinced many a timid but reasoning soul that fidelity to truth and 

 nature can never injure religion, however much it may shatter ideal 

 theologies ; nor in art can it injure anything but the false and the tem- 

 porary — the grand underlying principles resting on the basis of eternal 

 truth. Are we not justified, then, in saying, " The essentially beautiful 

 must be in nature ; it can not be beyond it, above it, nor below it ; the 

 merely ideal inform can have no real existence in the mind of man " ? 



-♦♦♦- 



:n^ew guinea and its inhabitants. 



By ALFEED EUSSEL WALLACE. 



I. 



IMMEDIATELY north of Australia, and separated from it at Torres 

 Straits by less than a hundred miles of sea, is the largest island on 

 the globe — New Guinea, a country of surpassing interest, whether as 

 regards its natural productions or its 'human inhabitants, but which re- 

 mains to this day less known than any accessible portion of the earth's 

 surface. Within the last few years considerable attention has been 

 attracted toward it by surveys which have completed our knowledge of 

 its outline and dimensions, by the settlement of English missionaries 

 on its southern coasts, by the explorations of several European natu- 

 ralists, and by the visits of Australian miners attracted by the alleged 

 discovery of gold in the sands of its rivers. From these various 

 sources there has resulted a somewhat sudden increase in our still 

 scanty knowledge of this hitherto unknown land ; and we therefore 

 propose to give a general sketch of the island and of the peculiar 

 forms of life that inhabit it, and to discuss briefly some of the interest- 

 ing problems connected with its indigenous races. 



It has hitherto been the custom of geographers to give the palm to 

 Borneo as the largest island in the vorld, but this is decidedly an error. 

 A careful estimate, founded on the most recent maps, shows that New 

 Guinea is considerably the larger, and must for the future be accorded 

 the first place. In shape this island differs greatly from Borneo, being 



