the Miocene period in the complete supremacy of the placentals and the almost utter extinction of the marsupials in the principal regions of the earth. Of the latter class of animals, the didelphys of the western hemisphere, of which the American opossum is the bestknown species, is the sole survival outside of Australia. This is owing to the fact that all the other continents have been more or less closely connected by land during long geological epochs. This is still the case with Europe, Asia, and Africa; even the dividing basin of the Mediterranean is of relatively recent origin, as may be clearly shown by a comparison of the fauna of its northern and southern shores. Also the extreme northern points of America and Asia, although previously separated, were subsequently united for a long time, beginning with the latter half of the Tertiary period and extending into the Pleistocene age, when the species of mammals now prevailing in both hemispheres were already existent. It is therefore perfectly intelligible that, under these circumstances, Australia and the adjacent groups of islands should be of special interest to the naturalist as fields of investigation; for there he can study living specimens of mammals, birds, fishes, and reptiles of which he finds elsewhere only the petrified remains.

It was with this object in view and with the pecuniary aid derived from the Ritter endowment fund that Dr. Richard Semon, a former pupil of Ernst Haeckel, and now professor of anatomy and zoology in the University of Jena, landed at Adelaide in the midsummer of 1891, and pitched his camp in the Burnett district of the Australian bush, at first on the banks of the Boyne River. He engaged as companion and general conductor of the expedition a German immigrant named Dahlke, whose family had left their fatherland when he was only four years old, and who had grown up into a thorough Australian. This man furnished a dray and five horses as the most convenient means of conveyance, and secured the services of eight families of aborigines, consisting in all of about thirty persons, men, women, and children, whose business it was to catch fish and search the dense Australian scrub for specimens of its fauna.

In order to stimulate the activity of the natives, Semon offered prizes for the capture of particularly desirable animals, and also promised to pay their regular wages at the end of every week; but a single experience of the results attending the latter part of this arrangement sufficed to prove its utter impracticability; for no sooner did they find themselves with cash in hand on Saturday evening than they procured several bottles of rum from a liquor shop kept by an Irish woman several miles distant, and on Sunday morning were all dead drunk. In order to prevent a repetition of this booz

of the bush. The term "mob," by which the tribe has learned to designate itself, is etymologically quite appropriate, since it would be difficult to find a race more mobile, unstable, and incapable of persistent effort in one direction than the so-called Negritos. With spears, clubs, and boomerangs they easily kill game enough for food; a few broad strips of bark set up in the form of a tent afford all the shelter they desire, and unless they prefer to go naked, as their an

cestors were wont to do, the tattered remnants of the squatters' castoff clothes supply them with all the raiment they want. Semon confesses a certain admiration for this inborn love of freedom and strong sense of independence, which they prize more highly than what we call the conveniences and comforts of life, although this unthrifty spirit of primeval savagery often seriously interfered with his plans, and in general presents an almost insuperable obstacle

to every effort to educate and civilize them. Several of these natives soon returned, and among them "Old Jimmy," whom he learned to esteem as the best and most faithful of assistants"; he afterward had many other Australian and Papuan aborigines in his service, and, through daily intercourse with them, became thoroughly acquainted with their

habits of life, racial peculiarities, tribal organization, religious ideas, and superstitions.

MACKENZIE.

After carrying on his explorations with remarkable success for nearly a year and a half in Australia, New Guinea, and the Moluccas, Professor Semon returned home via Java and India in the spring of 1893. The strictly scientific results of his researches during this period are now being published with the aid of several collaborators in a serial work entitled Zoologische Forschungsreisen in Australien und dem Malayischen Archipel (Jena: Gustav Fischer), and to be completed in some twenty-six numbers, of which six have already appeared. Meanwhile, he has given to the public a more comprehensive and popular record of his experiences and observations in a single volume, containing a mass of most interesting facts and reflections, and written in an exceedingly lucid and lively style (Im australischen Busch und an den Küsten des Korallenmeeres. Mit 85 Abbildungen und 4 Karten. Leipzig: Engelmann, 1896. Pp. xvi, 569. Price, 15 marks). We may add that the collection

of specimens made by Professor Semon is so extensive and extremely characteristic as to render the Zoological Museum in Jena the very best place in the world for studying the natural history of the regions he explored. Indeed, it is so unique that not long since au Australian zoologist came to the picturesque university town on the Saale for the purpose of examining one of the fauna of his native land.

In the present paper we shall not attempt to follow the author step by step in all his wanderings, nor to give even a résumé of his zoological studies. The reader will find in his book reliable and very readable accounts of the phascolarctos, the duckbill, the porcupine ant-eater, the bandicoot, the dasyure, the wombat, the various kinds of kangaroos and other marsupials, the bower bird, the bird of paradise, the cockatoo, the hornbill, and similar species remarkable for

AUSTRALIAN WEAPONS AND UTENSILS. 1 and 2, boomerangs; 3, stone hatchet; 4, wooden shield; 5, reed basket; 6 and 7, wooden clubs. (1-4, 6, 7, from Burnett; 5, from Cooktown.)

their strange forms and gorgeous feathers, and the multitude of gigantic lizards, death adders, and other venomous reptiles, and the huge but harmless python known as the carpet snake. There are also vivid descriptions of the natural scenery, as well as of the natural history of this marvelous land, in which the mammals lay eggs, the cuckoos resemble pheasants, the hoot of the owl sounds.