EDITOR'S NOTE 



WHAT I have been able to do to help this book to 

 come to print has been a task of delight. Towards 

 Meek, the naturalist, learned to distinguish varieties 

 of butterflies by their down, I dare pretend to no 

 great sympathy. My knowledge of natural history 

 is slight. But for Meek, the explorer, who knows the 

 wild places of the earth so well : who carries a charmed 

 life among savages because he has neither fear nor 

 cruelty; who talks simply of deeds of great daring 

 there is in my mind an almost envious admiration. 



It is for its human interest chiefly that this story 

 of a Naturalist in Cannibal Land seems to me 

 of value; though, without a doubt, its scientific 

 interest is very great, and on one scientific point all 

 the world, ignorant and learned, will probably follow 

 the author with attention : Is the tobacco indigenous 

 to the hill country of New Guinea, or did a wave 

 of colonisation from the American continent sweep 

 across the Pacific, bringing with it tobacco before the 

 dawn of history ? 



The races among whom Meek has lived his adven- 

 turous life these 20 years are so rapidly passing away 

 before the white man that every record of them in 



XUl 



