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POPULAR SCIENCE REVIEW. 
Mr. Burbidge gives a cheerful description of his voyage to Singapore, 
and of his experiences in that colony, including a visit to the neighbouring 
rajahdom of Johore ; thence he proceeded to Borneo, and afterwards to the 
Sulu Islands and back ; and everywhere he seems to have cast in his lot 
with the people in a hearty manner, which gave him many opportunities 
of observing their habits and modes of life. Accordingly the reader will 
find in this book many exceedingly interesting details with regard to the 
social condition of the inhabitants of the islands visited ; whilst from the 
circumstance that, in Borneo especially, the author made long journeys into 
the interior of the country, he is enabled to give much information upon the 
inland tribes, which will be of value to the ethnologist. He notices the 
Jakuns, or wild men of the interior of Johore (chiefly from the statements of 
Dr. Maclay), and the Muruts, Kadjans, and other supposed aboriginal 
inhabitants of Borneo, who seem to have disappeared from the coast, or been 
absorbed by the Malays, whose characters are more or less evidently modified 
by the intermixture of native blood. 
Naturally the plants of the localities visited by Mr. Burbidge attracted 
the greatest share of his attention ; and in collecting these he appears to have 
been exceedingly energetic and successful. From the mountain of Knia 
Balu (the Chinese Widow mountain) he succeeded in sending living plants 
of the gigantic pitcher-plant Nepenthes Rajah, and also another very curious 
species of the same genus (N. bicalearata ), in which the pitchers are armed 
with two formidable spines, which the author believes to have the function 
of preventing insectivorous birds and mammals frcm reaching the insects 
always contained in those curious receptacles. Fifty species of ferns, about 
one quarter cf which were previously unknown, were added by the author to 
the flora of Borneo ; and in the Sulu islands he also collected a considerable 
number of plants of the same order. Lists of these, with short descriptions 
of most of the new species, are given in an appendix. 
Plants did not, however, engage the whole attention of Mr. Burbidge, 
and many remarks upon animals observed are scattered through his pages. 
Nevertheless, zoology is not his strong point. Birds seem to have attracted 
him most, and he made collections of them both in Borneo and the Sulu 
Archipelago. Lists of the species obtained, with descriptions of some 
new forms, from the pen of Mr. Bowdler Sharpe, will also be found in the 
appendix. 
THE POETRY OF ASTRONOMY.* 
U NDER this title Mr. Proctor has issued another selection of 
his numerous contributions to our magazines during the last 
five or six years. Like all of Mr. Proctor’s essays, these are well-written 
sketches of the more popular portions of the science of Astronomy ; and if 
they will seem somewhat superficial to the more scientific of his readers, 
* The Poetry of Astronomy : a senes of familiar Essays on the Heavenly 
Bodies. By Richard A. Proctor, B.A., F.R.A.S. 8vo. London : Smith, 
Elder, and Co. 1881. 
