unnaturally has sent more recruits than any other branch of science. A
few students have been lawyers, but so far as I am aware Mr. Williamson
is the first British lawyer who has gone into the field, and he has
proved that legal training may be a very good preliminary discipline
for ethnological investigation in the field, as it gives invaluable
practice in the best methods of acquiring and sifting of evidence. A
lawyer must also necessarily have a wide knowledge of human nature
and an appreciation of varied ways of thought and action.

It was with such an equipment and fortified by extensive reading in
Ethnology, that Mr. Williamson was prepared for his self-imposed
task. Proof of his powers of observation will be found in the
excellent descriptions of objects of material culture with which he
has presented us.

I now turn to some of the scientific aspects of his
book. Mr. Williamson especially set before himself the work of
investigating some tribes in the mountainous hinterland of the Mekeo
district. This was a most happy selection, though no one could have
foreseen the especial interest of these people.

Thanks mainly to the systematic investigations of Dr. Seligmann and to
the sporadic observations of missionaries, government officials and
travellers, we have a good general knowledge of many of the peoples
of the eastern coast of the south-eastern peninsula of New Guinea,
and of some of the islands from the Trobriands to the Louisiades. The
Ethnology of the fertile and populous Mekeo district has been mainly
made known to us by the investigations of various members of the
Sacred Heart Mission, and by Dr. Seligmann. What little we know of
the Papuan Gulf district is due to missionaries among the coastal