British New Guinea

Abstract

IN NATURE (vol. xlvii. p. 345) Mr. H. O. Forbes has a lenient review of Mr. J. P. Thomson's “British New Guinea,” in which he reproduces a figure of four natives. In the original they are called “native mountaineers” (p. 95). As a matter of fact only the two central men are mountaineers; the two outermost being coast natives who acted as decoys to induce the timid highlanders to submit to being photographed. Mr. Thomson has a reprehensible habit of inserting figures which, while they illustrate the contiguous text, really belong to a different part of British New Guinea than that there dealt with. I fancy Mr. Forbes has been deceived in this respect, for the last figure which appears in the review is entitled by Mr. Thomson “Native Ornaments” (p. 120), and, though occurring in his description of the Fly River district, represent, if I am not mistaken, Papuan Gulf natives, most probably Motu-Motuans.