440 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXXVI. No. 927 



others, and the book gives information of no 

 other place for getting them. The American 

 novice, for example, vcould have no informa- 

 tion concerning the excellent optical houses in 

 his own country which supply exactly what is 

 needed; and all worry about the British 

 " methylated spirits " might easily be avoided 

 by explaining that ordinary alcohol or " de- 

 natured " alcohol would answer equally well. 



It would be so easy to adapt a fundamentally 

 good book of this kind to the country where it 

 is to be introduced that it seems incompre- 

 hensible why publishers are not more awake 

 to the advantages of such adaptation. 



These suggestions are made in the most 

 friendly spirit, and with the hope that future 

 editions will be made the most useful possible 

 in the new environment; for certainly no one 

 at all familiar with the subject could read 

 these 86 delightful pages, so full of helpful 

 suggestions to the beginner, and so full of en- 

 thusiasm for the beautiful world which the 

 microscope reveals, without a feeling of 

 gratitude to the author for making so plain 

 the way into this new realm, for uncovering a 

 road which has no end and which has new 

 beauties for each advancing step. 



S. H. G. 



The Polynesian Wanderings. Trades of the 

 Migration Deduced from an Examination 

 of .the Proto-Samoan Content of Efate and 

 other Languages of Melanesia. By Will- 

 iam Churchill. The Carnegie Institution 

 of Washington. 1911. Pp. 516, 2 maps. 

 The wanderings of the Polynesians have 

 long been a fascinating crux in ethnology. 

 The peopling of an inconceivably vast area 

 sprinkled with islands appeals to our wonder 

 more than the settling of continents, and 

 from the time of the earliest explorers in the 

 Pacific attempts have been made to hit upon 

 some clew to the dissemination of oceanic 

 peoples. It early appeared that language af- 

 forded the best means of tracing these move- 

 ments and in the gross this index has been 

 used since the time of Hale by students of the 

 Pacific insular races. 



Philology has made great strides both ma- 



terially and scientifically in recent years, how- 

 ever, and Mr. Churchill is foremost among 

 those who have applied the analysis of the 

 content of a language to the solution of the 

 historical problems connected with the migra- 

 tory movements of peoples, his method in this 

 case being to ascertain the percentage of 

 Proto-Samoan loan words in the Melanesian 

 languages over the area in question and to 

 chart the lines of migrations of the Poly- 

 nesians along the lines of greatest percentage. 

 The method thus establishes a definite quan- 

 titative basis of language research, the results 

 of which are very gratifying. 



Mr. Churchill has shown by his percentage 

 measure that the Proto-Samoans emerged 

 from the East Indies, passed out into the 

 Pacific, and with various Melanesian land- 

 falls, reached Samoa, regarded as the primary 

 distributing focus of Polynesians, thence by 

 diverse routes, populating other islands, and 

 in turn streaming from several foci, com- 

 pleting the population of the islands where 

 we now find Polynesians. The earliest move- 

 ment, according to Mr. Churchill, appears to 

 have taken place about 1,500 years ago. 



Among its other valuable qualifications the 

 work is a remarkable analysis of an archaic 

 language which Mr Churchill hopes will sup- 

 ply the data for the genesis of speech. This, 

 Mr. Churchill modestly puts forward as the 

 feature of his monumental book which will 

 give it a continued and wide infiuence. 



The Carnegie Institution is to be congratu- 

 lated on the publication. 



Two maps accompany the work, the one 

 showing the tracks of Polynesian migration 

 and the other the migration tracks through 

 Melanesia. 



There are three appendices, one containing 

 data and notes, two, the southern gateway, 

 and three, a bibliography. An adequate in- 

 dex is supplied. Walter Hough 



CHANGES IN THE GEBMAN UNIVEBSITIES 

 The former student returning to Germany 

 finds many changes. In the development of 

 the new Germany from the old, much that was 

 familiar has disappeared or has been replaced . 



