774 Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy. 



XCIV. — On the Ckania op [N'atiyes ot the Solomon Islands. By 

 Alexander Macalistee, M.D., F.E.S., Professor of Anatomy, 

 TJniversity of Dtiblin, 



[Read, January 22, 1883.] 



The Solomon or Salamon Islands form a large Archipelago, about 

 700 miles long, made up of two lines of islands, whereof seven are 

 of large size, and about thirty are smaller, and they form the eastern- 

 most portion of the Papuan Zoological Province. These islands are 

 chiefly volcanic, margined with coral, well wooded, with a flora rich 

 even for a western Pacific land ; but they have from early times 

 acquired for themselves an e"vdl reputation, both in point of un- 

 healthiness and inhospitality on the part of their inhabitants, and 

 hence our knowledge of their ethnology is scanty and fragmentary. 



They were discovered in 1668 by Mendana, and since his time 

 have been visited by Dumont D'Urville ( Voyage pittoresc[ue autour 

 du Monde, 1835, vol. ii. p. 150) ; by Brenchley {Jottings during ths 

 Crime ofS. M. S. Curacoa in 1865 : 1873, p. 248) ; by Eedlich, master 

 of the schooner "Franz" {Journal Geographical Society, 1874, p. 30) ; 

 byErskine in 1853; by Scherzer of the Austrian Expedition {Novara- 

 reise, 1861. ii. 429); by Webster {Last Cruise of the Wanderer: 

 Sydney, 1863). Inhabitants of these islands have been figured and 

 described by Dumortier {Atlas Bu Voyage au Pole Sud.), and by 

 Yirchow ( Verhand. der Berliner Gesellsch. f. Anthropologie, Ethno- 

 logie, &c., 1877, p. 241). They have been also visited by my former 

 pupils, Dr. Groode and Dr. Forbes, and two years since by H. M. S. 

 " Cormorant," on the occasion of which visit these skulls were obtained 

 by Lowry Armstrong, Esq., R.N., by whom they were presented to 

 me. 



There was (1873) but one European resident in the Archipelago, 

 Mr. Perry, at Makira, San Christoval ; but no mission station has 

 hitherto taken root. Some years ago a Roman Catholic bishop and 

 fifteen priests chartered a schooner and landed on Tsabel, but ere the 

 prelate had been a few hours on shore he was murdered, and his com- 

 panions compelled to re-embark (Erskine, West Pacific Islands,-^. 335). 

 My former pupil, Dr. Litton Porbes, who is well acquainted with the 

 inhabitants of many of the Western Pacific Islands, thus characterizes 

 the Solomon islanders: — " So innately ferocious and bloodthirsty are 

 the natives, that any white man that would live among them must go 

 armed, unless, indeed, his object be martyrdom; otherwise, before he 

 could possibly learn the languages and dialects of his congregation, he 

 would, in mere self-defence, have to send so many souls to Hades, 



