Page:The Zoologist, 4th series, vol 4 (1900).djvu/179

Rh 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. Macpherson 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.