AuGUST I, I912] 
NATURE 
557 
clan exogamy prevails with them, marriages between 
people of tie same cian, even though in different 
villages, being reprobated almost as much as are 
marriages between people of the same village. 
Mr. Williamson could discover no trace of 
totemism, nor ‘‘any idea which might be regarded 
as having a totemistic origin,” nor could he find 
any trace of mother-right, and a youth owes no 
special service to his maternal uncle, and even 
when he assumes the perineal band his mother’s 
relatives are of no special importance. 
There are thus marked differences between the 
Roro and Mekeo tribes and the mountaineers of the 
hinterland, and this ditference is emphasised by 
the absence of any elaborate system of chieftain- 
ship, such as is found among the dwellers of the 
plain. 
On the other hand, the “ Big Feast,’’ most care- 
fully deseribed by Mr. Williamson, has so many 
common features with the tabu 
feast of the Motu and _ kindred 
tribes, and even with the toreha 
and similar feasts of the Massim, 
that this resemblance cannot be 
accidental. All these appear to 
be Rites de Passage, by which 
the dead are more or less per- 
manently and successfully  dis- 
missed from the sphere of the 
living and segregated in the 
“other world.” Like the walaga 
feast of the Bartle Bay tribes, 
the “ Big Feast” is arranged and 
prepared for long beforehand and 
held at quite uncertain periods; a 
further similarity is that there is 
now no known occasion or event 
in reference to which it is held, 
yet the clue is given by the deck- 
ing of the village with the bones 
of important men, by the formal 
destruction of the grave-platform 
of a chief, and by the dipping of 
the long-bones in the blood of p46. 2—1ypes of Tapiro Pygmies. 
pigs, which are then used to 
anoint with blood the skulls of 
chiefs and big men, after which, though these 
skulls may be hung in the clubhouse, they will 
never again be used in any ceremony. 
Space permits of reference to one other matter 
only. Few who know this part of New Guinea 
and read Mr. Williamson’s cautious presentation 
of the evidence will hesitate in accepting a sug- 
gestion made to him by Father Clauser, namely, 
that while the slow shuffling, dancing steps of 
the plainsmen imitate the dancing movements of 
the goura pigeon, the livelier hopping and zigzag 
progress of the Mafulu mimic the livelier move- 
ments of the red bird of paradise. 
While other travellers besides Mr. Williamson 
have found evidence which may be accepted as 
indicating the existence of a strain of pygmy 
blood as far east as the eastern portion of British 
New Guinea, no one before Mr. Wollaston and 
his colleagues had met an undoubted pygmy 
2231, VOL. 89] 
and the Tapiro pygmies. 
population. But although the ‘Lapiro are brachy- 
cephals averaging only four feet nine inches in 
height, it does not seem sure that they are pure 
negritos, and culturally it is certain that they 
have been profoundly modified by outside influ- 
ence. They build excellent houses on piles, make 
gardens, grow tobacco, and terrace their hills for 
dancing grounds; indeed, in material culture they 
seem to be scarcely inferior to the Papuans of 
the low-lying ground between the mountains and 
the sea. Their weapons are the bow and arrow 
and bone dagger; they make excellent netted 
bags; perhaps the latter may be the clue on the 
material side to the foreign influence which has 
made them the most “cultured” of pygmies, for 
similar string bags are found among: the. hill and 
mountain folk of a large part of British New 
Guinea, and every additional collection seems to 
enlarge their area of distribution. Indeed, Mr. 
From * 
New Guinea.” 
Pygmies and Papuans: The Stone Age To-day in Dutch 
Williamson tells the writer that the same sequence 
of loops is found in the network of the Mafulu 
Of their social. system 
nothing could be ascertained, nor could any word 
of their language be recorded. Nevertheless, the 
supreme fact of their discovery stands forth, and 
our knowledge of the whole pygmy question is still 
further advanced by an interesting and critical 
vésumeé contributed as an appendix by Dr. Haddon. 
It will be seen that the expedition did not learn 
much about the pygmies; indeed, the account of 
them only takes up one chapter of Mr. Wollaston’s 
hook. Two other groups of people differing little 
from each other were met with; that these are 
Papuan is proved by their physical appearance 
and language, the latter forming the subject of 
an appendix by Mr. S. H. Ray, who takes the 
opportunity of reviewing our knowledge of the 
languages of Netherlands New Guinea. How 
