BREAKING THE GROUND 
case with New Guinea to-day. Its 300,000 square 
miles of territory, held by Great Britain, Germany, 
and the Netherlands, and now lying fallow, are 
destined in the course of the next half-century to 
enrich the worlds of commerce and of science to a 
degree that may to some extent be forecast by what 
is already known of very restricted areas. What 
New Guinea may become to the trader is outlined 
later in the present volume, merely, be it noted, from 
the outside observer’s point of view, but this of 
course has in it a large measure of uncertainty, 
contingent on conditions of 
‘* Labour and the changing mart and all the framework 
of the land.” 
Be this as it may, one thing remains sure, the 
extraordinary value of Papua to the man of science, 
particularly to the entomologist and the ornithologist. 
In the department of ornithology alone, we already 
know of 770 different species of birds inhabiting the 
mainland and the islands, which places it in this respect 
far above Australia, which, with a superficial area nine 
times greater, possesses less than 500 species in all. 
The ethnologist, too, has in Papua a _ happy 
hunting ground; for the tribes on the fringe of 
exploration present wonderful varieties of type, and 
as the mountain fastnesses of the interior are gradually 
opened up, there can be no doubt that rich material 
for the propounding of new problems and _ perhaps 
the solution of old ones will come to light. Language 
is curiously diversified: here you meet a tribe with 
a distinct speech, and camping near them for a time 
you learn the common currency of their tongue; a 
20 
