Sydney Anthropologist Leaves
p. 27 · Read in the full issue
For Outlying Solomons.
DR. H. IAN HOGBIN, recently a lec turer in anthropology at Sydney University, is on his way to Guadalcanal, B.S.I., to carry out general anthropological research on behalf of the Australian National Research Council.
Dr. Hogbin, who was the first to be admitted to the degree of Master of Arts in Anthropology in the University of Sydney, was with the 1927-28 expeditions to Ongtong - Java, and Rennell Island. The first job con fronting him on Guadalcanal will be the writing of a grammar of the lan guages, and he will study the natives in their primitive state in the bush, as well as those on the coast who have come into contact with white civilisation.
Dr. Hogbin has made a study of the causes of depopulation. He had ample opportunity to pursue this in Ongtong Java, where the population has de creased from 5,000 in 1907 to fewer than 800 in 1932.
An Austrian ethnologist, Dr. Hugo Adolf Bernatzik, is at present on his way to Rennell Island, where he will spend some months studying the natives. Here, also, the population (Polynesian) has decreased in 20 years from several thousands to a few hundreds.