New Guinea Pygmies

There are tribes of pygmies in the ranges of the northern watershed of the main island of New Guinea. In this unique photograph, taken by Rev. P. Deutscher, of the Finschhafen Lutheran Mission, another Lutheran missionary (Rev. G. Bergmann) is seen in a Boana Moun tain village with one of the little men; and. between them, there is a dwarf. Dwarfs are not unique, but a pygmy dwarf is something unusual.

I n this connection , it is worth noting that Lord Moyne (otherwise Guinness, of the famous stout) has been dropped out of the Churchill Government, after a short reign as Colonial Secretary. it was Lord Moyne who went “ex ploring along the north coast of New Guinea about 1936, and who subsequently and com placently claimed that he had “discovered” a race of pygmies hitherto unknown to science.

That well-known missionary and anthropologist, father Kirschbaum (subsequently killed in an aeroplane accident) challenged the claim of the British and was able to prove that he (Kirschbaum) had found the pygmies and des cribed them in a scientific magazine some years earlier.