64 NATURE STUDIES. 



kinship between the Simian and Human races, seems 

 only explicable on the assumption that the Sitnian 

 ancestors of man differed widely inter se. 



THE FIJI ISLANDS. 1 



THE ideas generally entertained respecting the Fiji 

 Islands and their inhabitants are not such as to 

 encourage the idea that life to white men would be 

 very pleasant there. Probably most persons who 

 have not followed the changes which have recently 

 taken place in this important group of islands, suppose 

 that the Fijians are still, as they used to be considered, 

 the most barbarous of all the Polynesians, addicted 

 frightfully to cannibalism, and little changed from 

 those who, as Herbert Spencer puts it, possessed such 

 " extreme loyalty," that if the king willed it, a Fijian 

 cheerfully stood unbound to be knocked on the head. 

 The days are passed, however, when a Fijian king 

 could register by a row of many hundred stones the 

 number of human victims he had eaten. The Con- 

 servative Fijian sighs in vain for the good old times 

 when the king's will reigned supreme. A visitor has 



1 "A Year in Fiji : an Inquiry into the Botanical, Agricultural, 

 and Economical Resources of the Colony." By J. Home, F.L.S., 

 &c., Director of Woods and Forests, and Botanical Gardens, 

 Mauritius. 



