330 



SOME NEW BOOKS. 



Semon in the Australian Bush and on the Coasts of the 



Coral-Sea. 



Im australischen Busch und an den KiJsTEN DEs KoRALLENMEERES. Reiscr- 

 lebnlsse und Beobachtungen eines Naturforschers in Australien, Neu-Guinea und 

 den Molukken. Von Richard Semon, Professor in Jena, i vol., 8vo, pp. 570. 

 Leipzig : Engelman, 1896. 



Books about Australia are numerous enough, but are mostly devoted 

 to a monotonous record of journeys in a barren and thirsty land where 

 no water is. Among the few that vary from this general character 

 we can only call to mind Lumholtz's " Among Cannibals," which 

 contains a most interesting narrative of the author's adventures with 

 the native tribes of Northern Queensland and of the animals of that 

 district. But the Swedish naturalist must now give way to the 

 German professor, who has not only made remarkable discoveries in 

 the course of his wanderings, but evidently knows well how to bring 

 them before the public. Professor Semon, who dedicates his narrative 

 to Professor Plaeckel and Dr. Paul v. Ritter, two of his brother 

 professors in Jena, left his university in June, 1891, with the principal 

 object of investigating the three great wonders of the Australian 

 fauna — the egg-laying mammals, the marsupials, and the lung-fishes. 

 In all these objects he seems to have met with undoubted success. 

 Proceeding straight to Australia, by Aden and Ceylon, he found 

 himself in a few weeks at Brisbane, and after a short stay took up his 

 quarters in the backwoods of the Burnett district of Queensland, 

 traversed by the Burnett and Mary Rivers. In these stream.s alone 

 the " living fossil," as our Professor calls the Ceratodus, has as yet 

 been ascertained to exist, though in former days it was doubtless met 

 with in other Australian rivers. Professor Semon, although, as will 

 be seen from many passages in his narrative, a most enthusiastic 

 supporter of the Fatherland and its interests all over the globe, 

 appears to have much appreciated the good qualities of the English 

 residents with whom he made friends in Queensland, and is unstinted 

 in his thanks for their assistance and in his praises of their hospitality. 

 Altogether he passed the greater part of two years in the wilds of 

 this district, which is not only the home of Ceratodus, but also of the 

 monotremes and marsupials of which he was especially in search. 

 But Professor Semon by no means confined his attention to these 

 subjects; he made huge collections in, apparently, every branch of 

 natural history. Nor did he by any means neglect the wild man of 

 Australia, without whose aid he would have had very little success in 

 his investigations. Our author devotes his tenth chapter wholly to 

 an elaborate account of the habits and manners of the Australian 

 natives, and dilates upon every particular as regards their customs, 

 history, and supposed alliances to other native races. 



The second point in the Australian Continent investigated by 

 Professor Semon, was in the coast-ranges of Northern Queensland, of 

 which he gives a lively sketch. Here our traveller seems to have 

 been attracted by the existence of a tree-kangaroo {Dendrolagus 



