1897] SOME NEW BOOKS 423 
portion of his book. This portion concludes with an account of the 
‘great part played by voleanic dust in the soils of many of the western 
States. A reference to Prof. Judd’s paper on the lavas of Kraka- 
toa (Geological Magazine, 1888) would have excellently supplemented 
the important quotation from Diller on p. 293, to the effect that vol- 
eanic dust is richer in silica than its parent lava. 
In the ‘theoretical considerations’ of chapter VII., we fancy 
that there is a certain amount of slaying of the slain. But this walk 
across the battlefield is in reality of service to learners, who are liable 
to regard all printed text-books as infallible. The suggestion on 
p. 314 that “volcanic activity increased with geological ages, and 
reached its maximum in Tertiary times,” is confessedly based on the 
geological history of North America, and is, we fancy, not even well 
founded for that area. The amount of denudation that has laid bare 
the Archean rocks of the north-east has probably wrought havoc 
along many old lines of volcanic activity. 
Prof. Russell regards the water in lavas as collected during the 
passage of molten matter, moving under earth-pressure, from the 
lower into higher and waterlogged regions of the crust (p. 318); and 
the liquid matter may arise during local relief from pressure, as the 
product of rocks previously solid (p. 3812). Hence he considers 
steam rather as a variable and unessential factor in determining a 
volcanic outburst. 
The work is, as we have hinted, admirably produced by the pub- 
lishers. The printers give us ‘ Roichthofer’ for ‘Richthofen’ on 
p. 252, and, far more excusably, ‘lave’ and ‘lava cases’ for 
‘larvee’ and ‘ larva cases’ on p. 209. 
GRENVILLE A. J. COLE. 
ANOTHER MEMOIR ON FUNAFUTI 
Tue ErHno.ocy or FunAruti. By Charles Hedley. Australian Museum, Sydney. 
Memoir III., part 4, 1897. 
THE pressing necessity of a systematic and immediate survey of the 
ethnology of the islands of the Pacific is again brought clearly before 
us by Mr Hedley’s paper. It is only too manifest that the strictly 
native culture of Funafuti is rapidly dying out, that the older arts, 
customs, and apphances are changing apace under the influence of 
European missionaries and traders. In a few years’ time the very 
recollection of the older culture will die out, and it will be impossible 
to obtain for our museums even models of the former appliances made 
with any accuracy at any rate. Hence every careful contribution to 
South Pacific ethnological literature must be welcomed. Mr Hedley’s 
paper does not profess to be in any way an exhaustive monograph, 
‘but is, in the main, a descriptive list of the ethnological specimens 
and models collected by himself and others, and placed now in the 
Australian Museum at Sydney. Most of these are described clearly 
and in some detail, while their interest is increased by reference to 
the resemblances observable between the various native implements 
of Funafuti and those of other islands, as bearing upon their affinities 
and upon the probably complex origin of the general culture of the 
inhabitants of the island. Funafuti seems to have drawn its culture 
