58 



NATURE 



[May 17, 1906 



ally assimilated into Prof. Herdman's general scheme — 

 all of whirh would be entertaining enough on a warm 

 afternoon in summer, when we lay on some grassy 

 cliff within sound of the sea, but is, it must be con- 

 fessed, a little trying to busy individuals anxious to 

 arrive at the kernel of the business in hand. 



Of the supplementary reports in parts iii. and iv. 

 ■the most important is probably Prof. Dendy's mono- 

 graph on the sponges, which occupies some two 

 hundred pages and is illustrated with sixteen plates. 

 Prof. Dendy describes 146 species from Prof. Herd- 

 man's collection, of which 77 are new, and he con- 

 siders that the most striking feature of the sponge- 

 fauna of Ceylon, next to its richness, is its close 

 relationship with that of Australia and the adjacent 

 islands. On the other hand, it differs considerably 

 from the sponge-fauna of the Red Sea, as well as from 

 that of the south and east coasts of Africa. 



In the case of the Alcyoniidae, on the other hand. 

 Prof. Arthur Thomson notes that there is a great 

 ■difference between the Ceylon collections and those 

 made off the Maldives by M"-. Gardiner and off. New 

 Britain and New Guinea by Dr. Willey. 



It is impossible to refer in detail to all the memoirs 

 in these volumes, which contain descriptions of a 

 great number of new or little-known species, and it 

 would be premature to attempt to anticipate the 

 general discussion on the fauna of Ceylon which Prof. 

 Herdman promises for the concluding part of the 

 report. All the memoirs are well illustrated with a 

 number of lithographic plates, of which the very 

 beautiful series accompanying Mr. E. T. Browne's 

 account of the Medusee may be specially mentioned 

 as doing credit to artist and lithographer alike. 



THE ABORIGINES OF UNEXPLORED NEW 

 GUINEA.' 



T N this work Mr. A. E. Pratt gives an account of 

 ■*■ the time he, with his son, a j'outh of seventeen, 

 spent in New Guinea collecting zoological specimens 

 during the years 1901-3. A short visit was paid to 

 the Dutch settlement of Merauke, newly established 

 among the Tugeri tribes of Netherlands New Guinea 

 to check the raids into British territory of these enter- 

 prising savages, but owing to the unsettled condition 

 of the country no attempt to leave the settlement was 

 made. Mr. Pratt then shifted his quarters to Port 

 Moresby, in British territory, whence moving to Yule 

 Island he organised his expeditions to the mountainous 

 .hinterland of the Mekeo district of the Central 

 Division, where almost the whole of his time was 

 spent and where his collections were principally made. 

 A large number of new Lepidoptera, a new fish, and 

 a couple of new reptiles rewarded Mr. Pratt's efforts; 

 l)ut although the object of the expedition was to 

 collect zoological and botanical specimens, Mr. Pratt 

 devotes little space in his book to natural history, its 

 bulk being given to a gossipy description of the 

 author's journeyings, with remarks, too often in- 

 accurate, on the natives he came in contact with. 



Mr. Pratt on p. 291 points out that he " cannot 

 pretend to be a trained ethnologist . . .," while his 

 " notes, too, were fragmentary . . . owing to the 

 stress of . . . journeyings and the pressure of 

 work. ..." 



In these circumstances it is easy to forgive the 

 amission of any mention of manv problems of the 

 greatest interest, e..^. the i-)rovenance of the Mekeo 

 stone adze and " pineapple " club, upon which some 



' "Two Years among New Guinea Cannibals." By A. E. Pratt, with 

 Notes and Observations by his Son, H. Pratt. Pp. 360 ; illustrated, 

 (London: Seeley and Co., Ltd , 1906.) Pricei6j.net. 



NO. 1907, VOL. 74] 



light might have been thrown in the country visited 

 by Mr. Pratt in his furthest journeys ; but, reasonable 

 as are these claims to consideration and forbearance, 

 and difficult and trying as the present writer knows 

 the Mekeo hinterland to be, they do not palliate the 

 publication of such a mass of misstatements and 

 inaccuracies as occur in this book, and are absolutely 

 no excuse for such apparent "faking" of photo- 

 graphs or drawings as produce the ridiculous results 

 shown in the plates facing pp. i68, 262, and 268. 



Again, with a perversity that is as determined as 

 it is misplaced, in the map given at the beginning of 

 the volume a number of such well-known Mekeo 

 villages as Aipiana, Inawi, and Rarai are bodily 

 transferred from the right to the left bank of the 

 St. Joseph River, to which Nara village is shifted 

 some twenty miles northwards of its actual site. 



Certain of the more glaring inaccuracies in print 

 and picture may now be specified. 



The description on p. 71 of Motu pot-making is 

 inaccurate, nor are " several hundred large dug-out 

 canoes brought together and moored side by side at 

 the landing stages in groups of six or seven " (p. 72) 

 to form the lakatoi used on the annual Motu trading 

 expedition to the Papuan Gulf. The present writer 

 has seen many Motu dances, and in 1903 watched the 

 departures of a number of lakatoi from Port Moresby, 

 but certainly never saw a Motu girl " spin round with 

 a dizzying rapidity," and finds it difficult to believe 

 that Mr. Pratt did ; while Mr. Pratt's statement is not 

 borne out by the plate, obviously a photograph, he 

 quotes in support of it. 



The plate facing p. 16S, with its attached 

 legend, " A piebald tribe : The Motu-Motu people of 

 Hoods Bay ..." constitutes perhaps the most gro- 

 tesquely erroneous statement in the book, and is not 

 unworthy of an imaginative traveller of the fifteenth 

 century. The plate shows two natives, irregularly 

 spotted with patches of white, wearing a form of 

 perineal bandage which is not worn at Hulaa or any- 

 where on the Hood Peninsula; and the accompanying 

 letterpress is scarcely less frankly imaginative; "the 

 piebald people are one of the mysteries of New 

 Guinea," says Mr. Pratt, " and their origin is unex- 

 plained." The origin of a piebald tribe in Hood Bay 

 is pretty obviously in the fertile imagination of the 

 author, who calls the tribe he has brought into exist- 

 ence the Motu-Motu, this as a matter of fact being 

 the Motu name for the Toaripi of the Papuan Gulf 

 living about 150 miles west of Hood Bay. 



Of course " albinos," though they never have pink 

 eyes, occur sporadically all over New Guinea, and are 

 particularly abundant at Hulaa, where there are at 

 least four of these " albinotic " individuals. But 

 apart from elderly folk, in whom leucoderma of the 

 hands and feet, spreading to the forearm and leg, is 

 by no means rare all over British New Guinea, the 

 writer, who has twice visited Hulaa, knows of but 

 one case of partial albinism, a child of about eight 

 years of age belonging to the Sinaugolo, a tribe in 

 no way closely related to the Hulaa folk. 



The astounding and wildly unnatural plates which 

 face pp. 262 and 268 cannot be passed without remark. 

 A glance at the latter plate will convince anyone 

 that it represents no tropical jungle, while the whole 

 story of the fishing-nets spun by spiders on bamboo 

 loops erected for this purpose in the jungle, which 

 these two plates illustrate, seems to be a far-off 

 reminiscence of the kite-fishing with a bait of spider's 

 web which skips along the surface of the water 

 practised in the D'Entrecasteaux and other archi- 

 pelagoes off south-eastern British New Guinea. There 

 are manv other inaccuracies and misstatements in the 



