December 8, 1892 J 



NATURE 



23 



be emigrants except of the lowest [? lower] class is like 

 /'awr/i'j— D on't. " 



From Queensland it was easy and natural for our 

 traveller to be attracted across to New Guinea, the land 

 of so much myth and mystery. Here he fell in with the 

 indefatigable administrator, Sir W. Macgregor, and was 

 able to lend him a helping hand in the skirmishing 

 incident on the capture of the natives of some villages 

 guilty of the murder of several Europeans. He spent 

 some days at Samarai, the head-quarters of the south- 

 eastern district ; and we feel sure that the almost unsur- 

 passable panorama visible from its hill-set bungalow of 

 " mountains wooded to the peak," and green isles, spread 

 out on every side, basking in an azure sea, and pictur- 

 esquely veiled in haze as they lessen away to beyond the 

 horizon, must have rewarded him for his visit, even at 

 the expense of a bout of fever. His account of what 

 he saw and did in Papua occupies some eighty pages, 

 and contains more trustworthy and interesting information 

 than many of the narratives of men who have spent a 

 much longer time in the country than Mr. Baden-Powell 

 did. The next region he visited was the Malay Archi- 

 pelago. He only gazed on Sumatra, " that extraordinary 

 island which contains probably a greater variety of big 

 game, of useful plants, and of wonderful scenery than 

 any other country of its size " ; but he visited many of the 

 most interesting places in Java, and the Straits Settle- 

 ments, and made extensive journeys in Borneo, where he 

 shot some of " the very extraordinary-looking proboscis- 

 monkeys {Larvatiis nasalis) ... I should imagine," 

 he remarks, " his ponderous nose would get very much 

 in the way of his biting any one, and he certainly has no 

 other means of defence." Our space will not permit us 

 to follow Mr. Baden-Powell ; through New Zealand and 

 the various islands of the Pacific sojourned in by him, 

 except to note his account of the preparation of " king's 

 cava," of which he was a witness, in Samoa : — 



" This was a great event. None of the Consuls even 

 had ever before partaken of ' king's cava.' But there 

 was a certain amount of sham about it. First, the root 

 was produced — genuine enough, I dare say. Six men 

 then sat in a row outside the house, the nine-legged cava 

 bowl before them. Each man was then given some water 

 to wash his mouth out, and a packet of cava wrapped in 

 a bit of leaf was given to each. I shuddered at the 

 awful thought of what was about to happen. In true 

 native fashion these nasty old men were undoubtedly 

 going to chew the root, and I . . . would have to 

 swallow the nauseous stuff ! I watched very carefully and 

 was much relieved when I saw the packets collected again 

 and put in the bowl. It was ready prepared [outside in a 

 less orthodox and less disquieting fashion] and the little 

 ceremony was only to represent formally the mode in 

 which it ought to be done, the cava being * taken as 

 chewed.' Then the bowl was solemnly brought into the 



i house and put on the floor at the end opposite the king." 

 This is an interesting instance of the evolution of 

 what might have been as meaningless a ceremonial as 

 are many of those survivals of abandoned customs which 

 are familiar to us in many other parts of the world. 



From Samoa Lieut. Baden-Powell made his way 

 home by the usual route via the Sandwich Islands and 

 through the States. 



" In Savage Isles and Settled Lands " is a book we can 

 heartily recommend. It is elegantly got up, is illustrated by 

 vVO. 1206, VOL. 47] 



excellent wood engravings, and has a map of the author's 

 route. Nearly every page presents in a few words some 

 bright vignette that will please and inform those who 

 have never had the opportunity of visiting those lands and 

 isles, and will set the home-come traveller a-dreaming 

 with grateful satisfaction of delightful days that are past, 

 and help him to live them over again more delightfully 

 still in the present. H. O. F. 



PROPERTY. 



Property : Its Origin and Development. By Chas. 

 Letourneau, General Secretary to the Anthropological 

 Society of Paris, and Professor in the School of 

 Anthropology. (Walter Scott, 1892.) 



LESS than a generation ago the history of early 

 civilization was summed up, if not in the three 

 words hunting, pasture, and agriculture, at least in the 

 formula of Sir Henry Maine : " Society develops from 

 family to tribe, and from tribe to State." Recent inquiries 

 have discredited both of these formulas, and taken us 

 back to the genesis of the family itself, and beyond 

 civilization to barbarism and savagery. If we listen to 

 Prof. Letourneau (to say nothing of Morgan and Mac- 

 lennan), we may reconstruct the evolution of society in 

 all its stages out of savagery by the "ethnographic 

 method," — "looking upon existing inferior races as living 

 representatives of our primitive ancestors " (Preface, 

 page ix). It must be remembered that in using this 

 ethnographic method we assume that the order of pro- 

 gress has been substantially identical in all cases, and 

 also that the simplest forms come first in time (p. 70, cf. 

 126). Both assumptions would need justification before 

 the results of the new method could be finally accepted. 

 Prof Letourneau had applied the method with great 

 learning and ingenuity in his earlier book on the evolution 

 of marriage. In the volume before us he applies it to 

 property. He begins with a chapter on property amongst 

 animals ; ants and bees, as we might expect, are shown 

 to be more highly developed in this matter than many 

 men, and they have many of the vices of men. They pro- 

 vide for the future. Their property is that of a community ; 

 but one community wars on another for pillage. There are 

 not only parasites, but idle aristocrats among them. The 

 amazon ants, who cannot even feed themselves, but de- 

 pend on their black slaves, are well known from Huber's 

 description, and are a standing refutation of Solomon's 

 high opinion of ants. On the whole, among animals, pro- 

 perty is due simply to the instinct of self-preservation ; 

 and Letourneau ascribes it to the same origin in the case 

 of men. Among the " anarchic hordes," which come 

 first in his series (p. 23), and of which the Fuegians are a 

 specimen, there is collective property. If union is 

 strength it is weakness that first leads to union (cf. p. 368). 

 But there is no personal property except in tools and 

 weapons, " the immediate result of personal labour " 

 (p. 39). Provision for the future is unknown. In the 

 second stage (among the " republican tribes ") the union is 

 more highly organized ; there is tribal government, with 

 minute regulation of conduct in regard to the dealings of 

 individuals with the necessaries of life. The most remark- 

 able example is perhaps that of the people of Paraguay 



