H 



NATURE 



[_Nov. 20, 1879 



how he breathe; in the dress, and although I see how it 

 could be effected, 1 think it right to leave it to Mr. Fleuss 

 himself to describe the principle of his invention whenever 

 he thinks, from his experiments, the fitting time has 

 arrived. 



In whatever way Mr. Fleuss gets breathing-room under 

 the water, he has, without a doubt, achieved a great prac- 

 tical success. He has learned how to live independently 

 for a long time shut off from all external access of air. 

 He has learned, if I may so say, to become artificially 

 amphibious, and if his plan succeeds, the cumbrous diving- 

 pumps are done away with and the art of diving is vastly 

 simplified. 



Again, if he can live so long on the small reserve which 

 he carries down with him in his dress, he has only to enlarge 

 the dress, to expand it, that is to say, into a submerged 

 vessel, to be able to go anywhere under the sea and do 

 with intelligence what is now left to unintelligent mecha- 

 nism. What such an intelligent direction might do with 

 torpedoes it is not at all pleasant to contemplate. 



The plan may be used for the purposes of deep-sea ex- 

 ploration, and the suggestion I made respecting my Salut- 

 landers, that they sought for discoveries on the floors of the 

 great oceans, may be so much nearer to accomplishment 

 than the time which I assigned to it, that I may haply 

 live to have the return laugh at what was called " the 

 most visionary of speculative fancies." It is equally 

 probable that the aeronaut may be able to rise much 

 higher than he has yet done in this dress, or in a car 

 specially constructed on a similar plan. 



The apparatus may almost certainly be applied at once 

 to another service very different in kind and on land 

 instead of water. When a man can move about with an 

 air-supply in his pockets, so to speak, he can go into fire 

 as well as water. In a fire-proof non-conducting dress, 

 provided with Fleuss' s breathing apparatus, a fireman 

 could enter a burning house, and without danger of 

 suffocation go wherever the weight of his body could be 

 borne. 



Lastly, in wells charged with foul air, or in mines 

 charged with choke-damp and other poisonous gases, the 

 Fleuss apparatus will, I feel certain, prove of the greatest 

 practical service, and I am happy in being the means of 

 introducing it at length to the notice of my confiires in 

 science. "" Benjamin Ward Richardson 



NEW GUINEA^ 



BEFORE us lies one of the earliest published maps 

 in which New Guinea is laid down. It belongs to 

 Huygen van Linschoten'sbookof East Indian voyages, and 

 was published in the year 1595, being derived largely from 

 Portuguese sources. The map is turned on one side as 

 compared with our present ones, so that at the top, on 

 one hand, appears Japan, strangely shaped, and with the 

 names of the cities curiously spelled, Meacum(the capital, 

 Miaco, Kioto) and Tochis (Tokio ?) : whilst on the other 

 hand lies New Guinea. At the foot of the map are 

 Sumatra and the Bay of Bengal, and on the left hand 

 China stands prominently upwards from the base of the 

 map, with a camelopard walking about in its midst, 

 regardless of the rules of geographical distribution. The 

 north point lies to the left hand of the map, and the south 

 to the right. New Guinea is represented as a very large 

 and elongate island, the south coast being drawn without 

 definite outline as unexplored, but with the Aru Islands 

 duly shown lying oft' it. The great island is marked " Os 

 Papvas," and at its eastern corner is the inscription " Hie 

 hibernavit Georgius de Menezes." Although Antonio 

 d'Abreu and Francisco Serrao possibly sighted the New 

 Guinea coast in 151 1, Dom Jorge de Menezes must be 

 regarded as the actuil discoverer of the island. He was 

 driven by the prevailing monsoon out of his course far to 



" "A Few Months in New Guinea." By Octavius C. Stone, F.R.G.S. 

 (London: Sampson Low and Co., 1880.) 



the eastward, when attempting to reach the Moluccas, 

 from Malacca, by a new route round the north of Borneo 

 in August, 1526. Having thus readied an island lying off 

 the coast of Papua, he had to " winter " there, that is to say, 

 to wait for the periodical change of the monsoon. Accord- 

 ing to Oscar Peschel, the island at which he remained, 

 and which was called Versija, was very possibly one of 

 those lying off Geelvink Bay. It is remarkable how very 

 slowly our knowledge concerning New Guinea grew 

 through the explorations of successive voyagers, since the 

 time of Menezes until within the period of the last ten 

 years, and even now it is quite startling to pick up a 

 small octavo volume and find it jauntily entitled " A Few 

 Months in New Guinea," as ifNew Guinea were as familiar 

 and accessible a place as say Iceland or Norway, about 

 which such little books are commonly written by enthu- 

 siastic tourists. 



We are sorry, indeed, that Mr. Stone's book is so little, 

 and would have been glad if it had been three times as 

 long, and he had given us further details of all kinds 



Fig. I. — Vahu, a Motu youth. 



concerning his most interesting sojourn amongst the Motu 

 people of the coast, whose God dwells out over the sea, 

 and the mountain-dwelling Koiaris, who believe the 

 dread "Vata" inhabits the mountain summits. 



It is close to the east end of New Guinea, and on its 

 southern shore beneath the Owen Stanley range of moun- 

 tains that the Motu country lies. Mr. Stone first made 

 an excursion from Cape York, in the small mission steamer 

 Ellengowan, up the Maikasa or Baxter River, the mouth 

 of which, on the New Guinea coast, lies due north of the 

 Cape, just on the opposite side of Torres Straits. The 

 river was traversed for sixty-four miles, but then forked, 

 and since both channels were too narrow for the steamer 

 to turn in, further progress was stopped. At this distance 

 even from the river's mouth, native plantations of yams, 

 sugar-cane, and tobacco were found. A further distance 

 of twenty-six miles was traversed in a small boat, and 

 large numbers of the recently-discovered species of Bird 

 of Paradise, Paradisea raggiana, were met with. The 

 bird does not croak like the Great Bird of Paradise of 

 the Aru Islands, " wauk wauk," but utters "a peculiar 

 whistle resembling that of a man to his dog," and must 



