Maech 5, 1915] 



SCIENCE 



363 



utilized for several hundred illustrations which 

 generally are of both popular and scientific 

 interest. Of the YO views of birds, seals and 

 ■sea-elephants scarcely one could be spared. 

 The bird-lover finds penguins and petrels of 

 all ages and conditions; the sea-rover will de- 

 light in the scenes of seal and sea-elephant 

 life; the meteorologist notes graphic records of 

 •winds and blizzards ; the biologist sees prophetic 

 shadows of the riches of later scientific publi- 

 ■cations; and the geologist finds pictured 

 nunataks, columns of dolorite and cliffs of 

 granite. The volumes will be welcome addi- 

 tions to scientific as to other libraries. The 

 index is neither good nor full. Unfortu- 

 nate was Sir Douglas in the " literary style " 

 due to his associate, as shown in the foreword 

 and by interjected poetry, which mar the 

 dignity of the story of a great and historic 

 expedition. 



It is pleasing to find Sir Douglas Mawson 

 in that restricted class that has a due sense 

 ■of obligation to predecessors. After praising 

 the skill and daring of Wilkes in the hazardous 

 voyage of his squadron for 42 days along the 

 borders of the antarctic circle, he adds : 



It is wonderful how much was achieved. We 

 may amply testify that Wilkes did more than open 

 the field for future expeditions. 



Americans thus owe a debt to Mawson, 

 whose faith, courage and ability have given 

 definite form to the 1,500 miles of the conti- 

 nent of Antarctica, which was reported by 

 Wilkes only to be contemned and suppressed 

 in narratives and on charts, and to be abso- 

 lutely neglected by explorers for seventy years. 

 A. W. Greely 



The Lower Amazon. By Algot Lange. New 

 York, G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1914. 8°, ill., 

 460 pages. 



Mr. Lange's new book shows a great advance 

 over his earlier work entitled " In the Amazon 

 Jungle" published in 1912. He has evidently 

 learned the Portuguese language, a thing so 

 many other travelers seem to regard as quite 

 unnecessary, and he has apparently reached 

 the wise conclusion that one does not need to 

 go deep into the forests of the upper Amazon 



in order to see and to learn interesting things. 

 The experiences described by the author were 

 confined mostly to a trip up the Tocantins, 

 but without reaching the region of falls, an- 

 other up the Moju a short distance above the 

 lower falls, and another to the Ilha do Pacoval 

 in Lake Arary — all of them near Para. 



Personal experiences are related and illus- 

 trated by good photographs taken by the 

 author, while the maps add greatly to the in- 

 terest of the book. The author has a facile and 

 attractive style, and no one has ever described 

 more truly or more pathetically the poverty, 

 sickness and despair that hang over the vil- 

 lages and rubber camps of the Amazon region. 



In spite of the fact that he does not take 

 kindly to the food of the country, the author 

 is no longer a tenderfoot. 



From a scientific point of view there is 

 nothing new in the book. The ancient pottery 

 from Marajo, on which he justly lays stress, 

 has been known to the scientific world since 

 1870, when it was visited by Dr. Barnard, of 

 Cornell University, and a paper on it was 

 published by Hartt in the American Naturalist 

 for July, 1871, while a much fuller account of 

 it is given in the Archives do Museu Nacional 

 of Eio de Janeiro, Vol. VI., Eio, 1885. 



Those who want to know how the conditions 

 of life and of business in the Amazon Valley 

 appear to one who is personally and freshly 

 familiar with them will find much of interest 

 in the final chapters regarding the conditions, 

 prospects, food, health, and what the govern- 

 ment is doing for the people. Those who be- 

 lieve in the boundless agricultural possibilities 

 of the lowlands of the Amazon should read 

 what is said at pages 27 and 387-8 of the 

 great, enormously expensive, and tragic experi- 

 ment of a North American firm on the Mojii, 

 and the footnote about its final abandonment. 



It is a relief to find a book necessarily con- 

 taining many Portuguese words with so few 

 typographic errors. On the other hand, it is 

 not clear why the author always uses the 

 Spanish word " machete " for forest-knife, or 

 why he speaks of his men as " bucks." The 

 long accent so often used by him on Portu- 

 guese words is not Portuguese at all: in the 



