74 
rorULAR SCIENCE REVIEW. 
THE EAST INDIAN AECHIPELAGOA- 
I T may be fairly laid down as a proposition to whicli there are very few 
exceptions, that books of travel contain a small amount of novel matter, 
diluted with an enormous quantity of vapid personal detail and ill-digested 
personal reliection. This is especially true of works on Africa, but it holds 
good for nearly all geographical literature, and we fear that it is in some 
measure applicable to the handsome volume which Mr. Murray has just 
issued. AVe would not be understood to imply that Mr. Bickmore has not 
added to our knowledge of the extremely interesting country he has travelled 
in, but we feel we are thoroughly justified in affirming that everything new 
in his narrative might easily have been stated in thirty or forty pages 
of the five or six hundred of which his book consists. The author went 
out, he tells us in his preface, to Amboina, to re-collect the shells figured 
in Kumphius’ “ Bariteit Kamer j ” and it is, in our opinion, to be regretted 
that he did not confine his published observations to the scientific points 
which came under his notice. In fact, Mr. Bickmore has given us an 
account of a scientific exploration, which has been productive of little or no 
scientific results. It is raost irritating, in reading this work, to find how 
many splendid opportunities of research have been overlooked in the desire 
to run rapidly over a huge tract of country, and in the effort to record 
sensational superficialities. "When we find a couple of our own countrymen 
going on a two months’ voyage to the Faroe Islands, and bringing us home 
facts and suggestions which throw light on a hundred scientific problems, 
it is with a feeling of inexpressible contempt that we accept the paltiy 
results which the author of the present volume has with wearisome mono- 
tony of style spread out over nearly GOO pages. When we think of what 
Darwin or Edward Forbes would have learned in the course of an expedi- 
tion like that of Mr. Bickmore, we cannot congratulate the friends of 
Science in Boston and Cambridge ” on their success in selecting the author 
to add to our scientific knowledge of the great Eastern Archipelago. As a 
pleasant book of adventure for those who know little or nothing of this part 
of the world, we can commend the volume ; as a luxuriously illustrated 
and ornamental appendage to the drawing-room table, we can speak equally 
well of it ; but as an addition to scientific literature it has little or no value. 
We have often in these pages protested against the petty self-vanity of 
travellers, who on every page of their works parade the common-place in- 
cidents of their domestic life before their readers, and who so often inflict 
upon us their efforts at “ magnificent composition.” But it would seem as 
if all travellers were alike, and ^Ir. Bickmore must be added to those who 
liave gone before liiin. There are numerous references in his Travels to 
scientific points of interest, and there is a list of birds given in the Appendix, 
but we find without exception that the problem or tlic observation or the 
• “ Travels in the East Indian .Archipelago.” By Albert S. Bickmore, 
Fellow of the Geo^aphical Society of London, Professor of Natural 
History in Madison University, Hamilton, New York. London: John 
Murray, 1808. 
