NOTICES OF NEW BOOKS. 151 



employes to collect for their museum, and made their commerce a 

 friendly helper to Natural History. The firm, we believe, no longer 

 exists, but the name of its principals will be long remembered. 

 Commerce and zoology are bad partners ; they each exact too 

 much to flourish together ; it seems that one alone can succeed. 

 Recently the Sandwich Islands have had their fauna investigated : 

 missionaries from time to time collect in the Lotos lands to which 

 they are not unoften consigned; huge folios still represent the 

 partial work of the old voyagers ; but it is probable that much 

 more is known of the Ethnology than of the general Zoology 

 of these lonely islands, where man alone seems to break the 

 peaceful dream of life. 



Mr. Christian has written a good book to lift the veil off the 

 Caroline Islands, which he visited rather as a philologist than 

 a zoologist, but has still given us incidentally much valuable 

 information as to that insular natural history. Thus in the 

 appendix we have not only a list of native names for " trees, 

 plants, and shrubs," but also for " fishes, insects, birds, and 

 animals " (sic). In the absence of scientific names we cannot of 

 course identify the animals to which the local names apply, but 

 we are able by his descriptions to form an estimate of the fauna 

 and to seek for more precise information. Where the author 

 allows himself to theorize he is always interesting — thus : " It is 

 very remarkable the horror in which Micronesians and Polynesians 

 alike hold Lizards and Eels, and it certainly seems to point to a 

 traditional recollection of the Crocodiles and venomous Serpents 

 they left behind them in the great rivers and jungles of Asia and 

 the larger islands of Indonesia. What proves this so strongly is 

 the fact that Crocodile and Snake names in New Guinea in many 

 instances coincide with Lizard and Eel designations current in 

 the dialects embracing all the isles of the Pacific." 



The book is beautifully illustrated, and at p. 125 Mr. Mac- 

 pherson will find an account of " Traps and Cages." We rise 

 from its perusal with a full measure of the vast potentialities 

 that exist for a naturalist who could spend a greater part of his 

 life on one of these comparatively small islands, investigating 

 the fauna as a whole, with a purview beyond both birds and 

 insects, and pass the close of his days in publishing his life's 

 work — one island, one man, one book. 



