628 



NATURE 



[July 15, 1920 



activities wliich they have to direct, but is, from 

 Secretary Walcott downwards, managed by men who 

 have received their training in the field or the labora- 

 tory or the rnuseum ; men who are familiar with the 

 needs and difficulties of their assistants ; men who 

 combine high ideals with a clear appreciation of what 

 is practicable, and so carry out a consistent policy. 



A feature of the National Museum, as of other 

 American museums, is the large amount of exploration 

 undertaken. An expedition, including collectors and 

 kinematographers, is now at work in Africa. Mrs. 

 Purdy Bacon has bequeathed fifty thousand dollars to 

 establish a travelling scholarship for the study of faunas 

 outside the United States. Many other expeditions 

 are here reported on. But we would chiefly emphasise 

 the policy of sending out the officers of the museum 

 to study and collect. The whole of the geological 

 staff was thus employed during the field-season of 

 1918, filling gaps in the collections, obtaining speci- 

 mens needed for public exhibition, and taking photo- 

 graphs to illustrate the explanatory labels. Many of 

 the other departments also had members in the field. 



Among other signs of life and growth, the report 

 records the inauguration of popular scientific lectures, 

 and the introduction of a Bill to provide a museum 

 of history and of the arts as a memorial to Theodore 

 Roosevelt. The building would afford much-needed 

 space for the rapidiv extending National Gallery of 

 Art. 



The Religion and Origin of the Hawaian 

 People. 



'T* HE sixth volume of the Memoirs of the Bishop 

 -•- Museum at Honolulu ' continues the publication 

 of Judge Fornander's literary collections. The first 

 portion contains two important papers by native 

 writers on the religion of the Havvaians. One, by 

 Kamakau, contributed to the collection by Dr. W. D. 

 Alexander, describes certain ancient ceremonies of 

 which the principal are those connected with the pre- 

 natal development of the royal child, the direction of 

 services to the gods, the catching of the fish op'elu, 

 and the feasts of the year. There are shorter notes 

 on heathen prayers and the ceremonial erection of 

 the heiau or god's house. A much longer paper by 

 the Hawaian author, S. N. Haleole, deals with the 

 functions of the Kahuna, " the priesthood called the 

 Order of Sorcery." The word in varying forms 

 {tahuna, tahunga, tauna) is used throughout the 

 Eastern Pacific to denote persons possessed of varying 

 degrees of wisdom from priesthood to sorcery, but in 

 the west, in Tonga and Samoa, has become entirely 

 secularised, and there (in the form tufunga) means 

 nothing more than a carpenter or skilled workman. 



The Kahuna in Hawaii was properly trained for his 

 oifice, and gave evidence of his powers by divination 

 from pebbles, clouds, shadows, and dreams, and by 

 his magical effects with the maunai or cast-away por- 

 tions of nail, hair, tooth, or clothing. His services 

 were in request in times of war and threatened evils, 

 for house-building or loss of lands, in courtship and 

 medicine. The omens of agriculture, canoe -making, 

 and fishing, with descriptions of the occupations 

 themselves, are fully described. 



The second part of this volume contains For- 

 nander's speculations on the "Source and Migrations 

 of the Polynesian Race." This appears^ somewhat 

 out of date' in the present stage of linguistic study. 



» Memoirs of the Bern'ce Pauahi Bishop Museum of Polynesian Ethnology 

 and Natural History. Vol. vi., Nos. i and 2. " Fornander Collection of 

 Hawaiian Antiquities and Folk-Lore." Third Series. Parts i, 2. Pp. 358. 

 Honolulu : H. I. Bishop Museum Press, 1919.) 



NO. 2646, VOL. 105] 



The author regards India as the original home of 

 the Polynesian people, and supposes that the Poly- 

 nesian and Aryan language families separated before 

 the latter had developed their inflected form, and that 

 traces of Polynesians are found in the Malay Archi- 

 pelago. A majority of the immigrants are 'thought 

 to have passed through Torres Straits to the Loyalty 

 Islands, and thence to Fiji, Samoa, and Tonga. 

 Fornander's so-called evidence is very unsatisfactory. 

 It is based mainly on the casual "resemblances of 

 certain Indian words to Polynesian, the Polynesian 

 meanings being read into the Indian word or vice 

 versa. 



The theory of art Indian origin of Polynesian may 

 be seen to underlie the theories of Macmillan Brown, 

 Percy Smith, Christian, and Churchill, but certainly 

 lacks the support of sound linguistic evidence. 

 According to this view, everything east of India which 

 agrees with modern Polynesian is borrowed from an 

 ancient form of Polynesian speech, though the lan- 

 guages themselves prove that Polynesia has received 

 many of its words from primitive Indonesia, and 

 that not by one migration, from one place at one 

 time, but in several colonisations from various parts 

 of the archipelago at different times. 



The final portion of part 2 contains other papers 

 by Fornander on Hawaian tradition, history, and 

 genealogy. 



As all the native writings in the first part are in 

 the original Hawaian with translations, thev form a 

 considerable body of text which will be useful to the 

 student of the language, quite apart from their value 

 in the exposition of Hawaian religion. The whole 

 work is very clearly and tastefullv printed and a 

 credit to the Museurn Press. Sidney H. Ray. 



Soil Temperatures.'^ 



'y HE paper by Messrs. West, Edlefsen, and Ewing 

 -*- referred to below is an attempt to predict the 

 probable temperature of any hour of any day. If the 

 mean monthly temperatures of any place are known 

 from previous records, it is possible to represent them 

 by a Fourier series of the form 



T = a+&cos((9-c)+dcos2(6-e)+/cos3(^-^)+ . . . 

 where T = temperature at time 6, a = mean annual 

 temperature, b, c, etc. = constants. It is also found for 

 normal days that the temperature at any given hour 

 is a certain percentage of the mean daily temperature, 

 and that this percentage is practically constant irre- 

 spective of 'season. The Fourier series is used to 

 predict the mean daily temperature, which is then 

 multiplied by the appropriate percentage factor to 

 obtain the temperature at the given hour. An arith- 

 metical method, avoiding the use of the Fourier 

 series, is also described. The results are fairly trust- 

 worthy for arid regions, but not for humid areas 

 where storms, etc., are frequent. 



In Capt. Franklin's third paper on soil temperatures 

 (see "Forecasting Frosts," Nature, January i, 1920, 

 p. 450) the variations in the ratio of temperature 



ranges at the 4-in. depth and the surface, \^\ are 



studied under a variety of weather conditions. The 

 values vary widely, from 0-19 in a very dry soil to 

 0-85 during heavy rains. The most common value is 

 about 0-40. The influence of the soil-water on tem- 



1 " Determination of Normal Temperatures hy Means of the Equation 

 of the Seasonal Temperature Variations, and a Modified Thermograph 

 Pecord." By F. L. West, N. E. Edlefsen, and S. Ewing. Jouryi. Agric. 

 Res., vol. xviii. (1920), p. 499. 



"The Effect of Weather Changes on SoU Temperatures." By T. B. 

 •Franklin Proc. Roy. Soc. Edinburgh, vol. xl. (1920), p. 56. 



