November 24, 1910] 



NATURE 



109 



<;arly childhood bv his father, who imbibed his own 

 interest in zoology and botanv as a pupil of Mac- 

 Gillivray, and throughout his life never referred 

 to his old professor without some term of affection. 

 The writer, therefore, has always regarded himself as 

 a grandchild of MacGillivray's influence. It was his 

 fortune afterwards to receive in the same class-room 

 his own zoological training, and to engage in cura- 

 torial work in the museum in which many of the 

 specimens were labelled in MacGillivray's handwrii- 

 ing, and some vears still later to follow closely the 

 track of the Rattlesnake, the naturalist of which was 

 John MacGillivray, the professor's eldest son, and its 

 surgeon Huxley, also the writer's revered master. As 

 familiar to the reviewer, too, is MacGillivray's beauti- 

 ful handwriting — of which a specimen is reproduced 

 on p. 68 of the ■" Life " — as if it were that of a member 

 of his own family ; for, by a strange chance, one of his 

 brothers had the good fortune, while a student, per- 

 haps about 1865, to rescue for a few pence from a 

 butterer's mean uses a large bundle of SlacGillivrav's 

 journals. Sad to say, only a few pages ran consecu- 

 tively, but they were perused with something 

 approaching to veneration. These contained, if 

 memory serves, descriptions of some new species of 

 mollusca ; notes of excursions, with zoological and 

 botanical observations — pages, perchance, of the 

 second volume of "A Year's Residence and Travels 

 in the Hebrides," which the "Life" records as lost; 

 memoranda o'n the conduct and concentration of his 

 pupils, while sitting for their class examination ; the 

 names tabulated according to " nations " (natal re- 

 gions), and to harmony and disharmony in colour of 

 their hair and eyes, with the proportion of successes 

 or failures in these categories. Alas ! it is to be feared 

 that these pages have now also gone the way of all 

 things. 



It is gratifying, especially to Aberdonians, to find 

 MacGillivray's memory so sympathetically revivified 

 in this volume, and to feel that it will be kept green 

 therebv for the future among his successors in the 

 title of ornithologist. 



M' 



THE MAORIS OF NEW ZEALAND.^ 

 R. JAMES COWAN has done the student as well 

 ■'■*-*■ as the general reader a service in publishing the 

 material he has personally collected from the kau- 

 matuas, the old and learned men of many Maori 

 tribes, for the time is rapidly approaching when verv 

 little more can be gathered from the natives. The 

 book is by no means of the monographic kind, but 

 consists of what are virtually a series of essays on 

 different subjects, based entirely on first-hand infor- 

 mation and the experiences of a lifetime of sympathetic 

 intercourse with the Maoris. 



The subject-matter may be grouped as follows: — 

 The origin and migrations of the Maori and the settling 

 of New Zealand; religion, tapu, omens, and the like; 

 social customs, houses, canoes, tattooing; nature lore, 

 folk-tales, poetr>- ; while the last third is mainlv 

 devoted to the Maori in war, intertribal and with 

 Europeans, and to cannibalism. 



^ Comparatively early in the book we find it stated 

 "that the Maori-Polvnesian is a brand, though a 

 distant one, of the Caucasian race is now generallv 

 accepted." It may be granted that the main stock 

 of the Polynesians had, in the remote past, some 

 relationship with the ancestors of certain peoples now 

 living in Europe, but since then mixture has taken 

 place with other races, A few students of Maori and 



;il.V/T^*^^^°"^°^..^^* ^f^'^"*^-" By James Cowan. With numerous 

 ri^,.^ M 7'^'T P>o'^?j;^ohs and drawings. Pp. xxiv+356. (Christ- 

 church, N.Z. ; London : Whucombe and Tombs, Ltd., 191a) Pr ce 155. 



other Oceanic languages have endeavoured to trace 

 I them to a Semitic origin, but there is no likeness 

 between the grammar, and Polynesian and Semitic 

 words are made in an absolutely different way, and 

 there is no sort of likeness in the changes they 

 undergo. The so-called evidence of connection is 

 based only on the resemblances of certain words, but 

 this is a method that could be adopted to prove any 

 other theor}-. It comes therefore as a shock to read, 

 "Certainly there seems to be adequate evidence to 

 justifv us in arriving at these general conclusions : 

 that it was on or near the shores of the Persian Gulf 

 and of .\rabia that the ancestors of the Maori-Poly- 

 nesian lived ; that they had racial affinities with the 

 ancient Chaldeans, from whom they gained most of 

 their astronomical knowledge ; that they also were 

 blood relations of the Phoenicians, who were the most 

 adventurous of ancient mariners ; that they had affinity 

 with the Egyptians, some of whose religious tradi- 

 tions they absorbed" (p. 31). "The coastal [)eople of 

 south-western Asia were from ancient times navi- 

 gators with a knowledge of the stars ; they, and prob- 

 ably the early Egyptians, were amongst the earliest 

 sailors " — [what evidence is there that the Egyptians 

 were ever a seafaring people?] "Thev coasted down 

 the eastern shores of the African continent, at any 

 rate as far as the Zambesi, and they also visited, and 

 probably partly colonised. Madagascar; this would- 

 account for the resemblances between the Maori-Poly- 

 nesian language and the Malagasy " (p. 35). 

 The sole evidence for this south-westerly migration 



NO. 2143, VOL. 85] 



The Korotangu From " The Maoris of New Zealand.' 



of the ancestors of the Polynesians is the undoubted 

 relationship of Malagasy with Austronesian languages. 

 Malagasy is definitely related to the Indonesian group 

 of languages, especially the Batta of Sumatra, 

 Ngadju Dayak of Borneo, Sangir, and certain Philip- 

 pine languages (e.g. Tagal), which must be regarded 

 as more primitive than the Melanesian languages or 

 the later Polynesian; but there is nothing Semitic 

 about any of them, and we cannot at present profit- 

 ably trace the Indonesian-Polynesian stock further 

 back than to the supposed " Gangetic Race " of J. H. 

 Logan, a conclusion to which S. Percy Smith evidently 

 subscribes in his valuable little book, " Hawaiki." 

 Mr. Cowan fortunately deals ven,' little with such 

 problematical questions, and we can feel more at ease 

 when he confines himself to purely Maori ethnology. 



There is an interesting account of the several 

 voyages of the historic canoes to New Zealand, and 

 an illustration is given of a carved stone bird, the 

 korotangi, or "eying dove," which was brought in 

 the Tainui canoe from the ancient home of the race. 

 Mr. Cowan asserts, and we can well believe him, " it 

 is not of Maori manufacture " ; it is loj inches long, 

 and "carved with high artistic finish out of a ven,' 

 hard and heavy dark-green metallic stone." Of 

 especial value are the numerous translations of Maori 

 invocations, charms, and poems. The chapter on 

 social life is superficial, and tells us nothing about 

 the real social organisajtion of the people. The account 



