March 23, 1900.] 



SCIENCE. 



471 



fears of the people aud avoiding all unnecessary 

 risk to the inoculated, and, further, with a 

 view to enabling the inoculations to be carried 

 on with the least possible amount of attendant 

 inconvenience, we would insist upon the neces- 

 sity that stringent precautions should be taken 

 to insure that all the vaccine used is quite free 

 from contamination, and we would recommend 

 that the volume of the necessary dose should 

 be made as small as possible. 



III. With a view to removing any possible 

 ground for distrust as to the conveyance of dis- 

 ease by inoculation from one person to another 

 we would recommend that the syringe should 

 be sterilized in the presence of the person about 

 to be inoculated. 



IV. We are of the opinion that inoculations, 

 under the safeguards and conditions stated 

 above, should be encouraged wherever possible, 

 and, in particular, it seems to us desirable to 

 encourage inoculation among disinfecting staifs 

 and the attendants of plague hospitals. 



We cannot bring to a conclusion this consid- 

 eration of anti-plague inoculation by Mr. HafF- 

 kiue's prophylactic fluid without expressing 

 our sense of the importance of the method 

 which Mr. HafFkine has devised and of the re- 

 sults which have been achieved by it. The 

 credit due to Mr. Haffkine is the greater be- 

 cause the difBculties with which he had to 

 contend in this matter could only have been 

 overcome by great zeal and endurance. Mr. 

 HafFkine's work on anti-plague inoculation, 

 while not based on any new scientific principle, 

 constitutes, it seems to us, a great practical 

 achievement in the region of preventive medi- 

 cine. 



SPIRIT-LOBE OF TEE 3IICB0NESIANS. 

 Recently the director of the ethnographic 

 division of the royal museums at Berlin has 

 returned from a prolonged visit to the Sunda 

 islands, Micronesia and Melanesia, and is now 

 able to give to the world the multifarious re- 

 sults of his observations and researches. Micro- 

 nesia had heretofore been studied in part only, 

 as far as its ethnography is concerned, and it 

 was chiefly the Pelew islands that had attracted 

 a Bhare of attention from German scientists ; 

 although the Mariana islands had been consid- 



ered also. Research has now been made much 

 easier by the number of colonies which Germany 

 has established in this insular domain. 



The entire group of the Carolinian islands, 

 with a native population of about 30,000, is what 

 Director Adolph Bastian chiefly describes in his 

 recent publication, 'Die mikronesischen Col- 

 onien aus ethnologischen Gesichtspuncten,' Ber- 

 lin, 1899. Octavo, pp. 7 and 370. To begin 

 with, Dr. Bastian gives a sketch of the social 

 life of the Pelew nation, of their chiefs, notables 

 and government. Then follow his observations 

 on mortuary rites, their theories about death, 

 the soul after death aud the mutual intercourse 

 of souls. Then are discussed Malay theories of 

 black and white magic (whatsoever this may 

 be), of demonology, the tutelary genii, the crea- 

 tion of the world, evolution and what we call 

 the infinite. The demonology is among the 

 Malays weird and fantastic, as might be ex- 

 pected, but also highly poetical and full of 

 originality. For many years back the white 

 race has been informed of the religious views 

 and mythology of the Maori, the Samoa, Tonga 

 and Mangaia islanders, and there is no denial 

 of the fact that the cosmogony aud spirit-worlds 

 of these natives are as grand in their conception 

 as those of many peoples of European antiquity. 

 Their systems of the world and of after-life come 

 very near the metaphysical, and when the Euro- 

 pean who transmits these views to us is himself 

 a philosopher, or at least a thinker, he will 

 make the Malay systems appear to us so much 

 the more philosophical. Dr. Bastian, being 

 a votary of the comparative method in eth- 

 nology, has for every myth, custom or belief 

 a score of parallels ready, which he takes from 

 Mediterranean, African, American or any other 

 tribes or nations of the globe, or historic com- 

 parisons of beliefs from Greece, Rome, Meso- 

 potamia, China, or Mexico. Anyone able to 

 follow Bastian in his vast amount of reading 

 (his quotations of sources are summary and 

 therefore of little use), will undoubtedly derive 

 benefit from what he states. But these state- 

 ments are given in a manner that is too chaotic 

 and profuse and most readers find it too difficult 

 to follow the thread of his argumentation. 



Oracles through whistling are found through- 

 out these islands. Their main gods transmit 



