Scientific Records of the Pacific
p. 77 · Read in the full issue
THE report of the Director of the Bishop Museum, Honolulu, Hawaii, for the year 1933 has come to hand. This great institution (the Bishop Museum) is the one powerful and active organisation in the world which is making an authentic record of South Seas life and culture, not only as it is but as it was; and for that reason its service to mankind has a value almost beyond calculation. For that reason, also, the Annual Report of the Direc tor, summarising the activities of the Museum, should be in every reference library.
The Museum issues regular Bulletins, in which it places on record the results of its work in the fields of research and en quiry. During 1933 it issued 17 such Bul
letins, together with about a dozen special publications. Up to the end of 1933 the Museum had issued 116 Bulletins.
There is not an Administrator in the Pacific who does not provide the Bishop Museum with all the assistance within his power—and this is as it should be.
“Oceania”
A modest but important counterpart of the work that is done in the Pacific generally by the Bishop Museum of Hono lulu is carried out in the Australian Paci fic Territories (Papua, New Guinea, etc.) by the Australian National Research Council; and a record of much of the work of the latter body is contained in the Council’s quarterly journal, “Oceania.”
This extremely valuable magazine is edi ted by Professor A. P. Elkin, who is at the head of the department of Anthropo logy at the University of Sydney; and the assistant editor is Mr. Ian Hogbin, who is also a notable anthropologist.
Remarkable work in the field of an thropology has been done in New Guinea in recent years and much of it has been carefully described in the issues of “Oceania.” In the current issue (March, 1935) there are a number of articles of exceptional interest, including “Warfare Among the Tanga,” by F. L. S. Bell; "Sickness and Its Treatment in Manam Island, New Guinea,” by Camilla H.
Wedgwood; “Native Culture of Wogeo— Report of Field Work in New Guinea,”
H. Ian Hogbin; “The Balum Cult of the Bakaua of Huon Gulf, New Guinea,” by Stephen Lehner; and “Tabar To-day: A Study of a Melanesian Community in Contact with Alien Non-Primitive Cul tural Influences,” by William C. Groves.