*3 
strange object themselves, they would have made a fetish of it, without 
doubt. 
We hear from Mr. Taaffe that a second specimen of the imple- 
ment has been discovered in the river bed. This we have not yet 
had an opportunity of examining, but our informant states that it is 
very similar to the one described, only differing from it somewhat in 
shape. 
Bethinking ourselves of a caution accepted by experience, we 
must admit that the burial of products of human handiwork and of 
fossil bones in the same river bed does not of itself prove that the two 
are of the same age, unless they were found in contiguity, immediate 
or approximate. Awaiting information on the point, we must mean- 
while be content with probabilities, and these are in favour of of con- 
temporaneity. If " prehistoric man " in Europe was early enough 
and artistic enough to leave us spirited gravings of the mammoth 
and horse of his day, and carvings of reindeer worked out of their 
own antlers ; if the pestle used as a fetish in New Guinea is of the 
same type as tertiary pestles found under the soil of California ; if 
man in Australia made implements out of the bones of extinct beasts 
and left them to be found under lava, at a depth of 238 feet ; we can 
hardly doubt that he has survived in New Guinea while some other 
animals, at least, have succumbed to unfavourable changes in their 
environment. 
Woodlark Island lies at a distance of 180 miles E.N.E. of the 
extreme Southern point of British New Guinea. Its short diameter 
measures 15 miles ; its long one, trending parallel to the New Guinea 
coast, 41 miles. Nearly one-half of its surface is covered with masses 
of coral lying in the utmost confusion and permeated by modern 
watercourses. The chief of the latter crosses the island near the 
middle of its length, and is the old river bed in which the fossil bones 
and the present relic were found. It is described as of great width 
and depth, carrying, therefore, such a stream as Horace may have 
imagined when he wrote the line which has proved more famous than 
truthful : " Labitur et labetur,'' &c. A channel of so great capacity 
must have drained a watershed vastly greater than the 500 or 600 
square miles of the Island. In which direction — east or west — lay 
that vanished land ? Could the direction in which the river flowed 
be ascertained, the question would have a ready answer, if not a quite 
perfectly satisfactory one. The occurrence, on the mainland of New 
Guinea, of relics alike to this pestle in its teaching, naturally 
suggests that, during the age of the people that made them, the lost 
land stretched towards the west, possibly uniting the two islands. 
These records of their industries, sunken in a river bed or converted 
into supernatural agencies by a credulity which is far from being 
extinct among ourselves, have survived the ages occupied by the 
submersion of eastern New Guinea and the subsequent rise of Murua. 
That Murua has risen, from a moderate depth at least, we know for 
certain. Our correspondent, Mr. Taaffe, informs us that around the 
middle of the island rises hilly land to a height of over 300 feet, and 
that at that level are to be seen sea shells — notably huge clam shells. 
