Recent Bishop Museum

Publications

FIJIAN FRONTIER, by Dr. Laura Thompson. Studies of the Pacific, No. 4. Published by the American Council, Institute of Pacific Relations, 1940. Many illustrations. Price, $2.

In a readable and delightful manner, Dr. Thompson describes native life in the Lau, or eastern islands of Fiji. The Lau group forms an outpost between Fiji and Tonga, its culture influenced by both. It is the zone of transition be tween Melanesia on the west, and Poly nesia on the east. The history of these cultural contacts is carefully traced.

Dr. Thompson knows whereof she writes. She was in Fiji for nine months during 1933-34. During that time she lived among the natives on the island of Kambara, visiting five of the neighbour ing islands. Learning the Lauan lan guage, she shared the daily life and culture with the people, and gained an intimate insight into it.

The environment of these “famine isles’’ is discussed from the point of view of those in it. How a Fijian grows up is described in detail, including inti mate practices of birth, childhood, ini tiation into young manhood, and mar riage. Education and contact with mis sionaries; native beliefs and how these are being modified by contact and com petition with a foreign culture; adjust ment to this new cultural standard, and the consequent struggle for existence, all are detailed.

An introduction by B. Malinowski praises the book as “a genuine sample of scientific anthropology.” “The author,” he says, “keeps her eyes open on every thing that exists. She does not vitiate her observation by eliminating one of the most essential elements in her field: the existence and pertinacity of the white man and his camp followers,” He adds that this constructive and sympa thetic yet outspoken criticism of existing conditions ought to be read by adminis trator, anthropologist, and economist alike.

Ethnology Of Easter Island,

by Alfred Metraux, Bishop Museum Bulletin 160, 432 pages, 7 plates, 58 text figures, 1940.

This extensive work covers the geo graphy, traditional history, social orga nisation, and material culture of this much-discussed island, at the south eastern corner of Polynesia. Dr. Metraux was the leader of the Franco-Belgian expedition to Easter Island in 1934-1935, and his conclusions are based upon both his own observations in the field and a careful study of collections in European museums and Hawaii, and all published material.

He says: “The supposed mystery of Easter Island rests on the assumption that the culture of this speck of land was too elaborate to have been produced by the natives who lived on it when it was discovered by Europeans.” He goes on to show, by geologic evidence, that a former more extensive culture could not have been obliterated by cataclysmic dis aster. He rejects the theory of the island being the remnant of a sunken continent or archipelago. The resemblance of the Easter Island culture with that of Melanesia is only superficial, he says, and does not show racial connection.

Relationship with South American Indians is considered fantastic.

Dr. Metraux suggests that Easter

Island was populated by a single wave of Polynesian immigrants, of the same stock as the ancestors of the Marque sas and the Mangarevans, who arrived at an early date. Their culture was conditioned by lack of wood. The giant statues were the specialised expression of their art, made possible by material which lent itself to gross carving.

The Genus Ficus (Horace Ae)

In South-Eastern Polynesia, By

V. S. Summerhayes. B.P. Bishop Museum Occasional Papers, Vol. XV., No. 21, pages 227-228, March 11, 1940.

A botanist at the Royal Botanical Gardens, Kew, identifies the cultivated fig, Ficus carica, and two native spe cies, Ficus prolixa and Ficus tinctoria, from material collected by the Mangare van Expedition, in 1934, in the Tuamotu and Austral Islands, Rapa, Pitcairn, and Mangareva.

Some New Species Of Araucari

Cola Lea From The South

PACIFIC (Coleoptera, Tenebrionidae).

B. P. Bishop Museum, Occasional Papers, Vol. XV., No. 23, pages 239-242, 2 figs.; March 11, 1940.

A British Museum entomologist de scribes four new species of beetles, from native forest plants, in the Society and Austral Islands and Rapa, in a genus previously known only from Norfolk Island, and there under the bark of Araucaria trees. A key is given to sep arate the four species.

Hon. Gerald Hogan, M.L.C., Crown Law Officer at Rabaul, New Guinea, is now in Sydney spending three months’ furlough. The work of the commission inquiring into native labour conditions in New Guinea, of which Mr. Hogan is a member, has been suspended tempor arily, as two of the three members are absent from the Territory.

Mr. T. O’Dea, assistant general mana ger of Guinea Airways Ltd., at Port Moresby, has been away on furlough He is being relieved in Port Moresby by Mr. N. Fader. On Mr. O’Dea’s return to Port Moresby he will take possession of his new house, now being completed, on Toaguba Hill, Ela Beach.