ter, grows like a vine, and is often found twined around or clinging to the trees of the great island forests. Again, there is the important difference in the two gums, that rubber requires a chemical preparation with some of the earths, or to be mixed with certain proportions of metallic oxides, to make it harder after heating and molding, before it will retain the shape desired, becoming then vulcanized rubber.

SCREW PINE (PANDANUS).

This tree, much valued in the Pacific, is native to most of the islands, where it grows in the greatest abundance. It is among the first of the plants to appear on newly formed or forming islands, and with its spreading roots, often raised above the ground and supporting the main trunk on their stems, it acts as a dam and barrier to encroaching waves, and performs an important part in collecting and retaining the drift and debris, that assists so materially in the first plant growth of islands. Its leaves, growing generally from the ends of the main branches, spreading from the trunk, grow similar to those of the pineapple, whence its name; but unlike the latter, it is a tree growing from twelve to forty feet high. The many ways that the bark, timber and the strong fiber of its leaves can be used, makes it highly prized by the natives.

RESINOUS GUM TREES.

The great forests of Borneo, Sumatra, Java, Celebes, New Guinea, etc., teem with an almost endless variety of trees that furnish the liquid resins so valuable as a base for our varnishes, while the ground itself

supplies many forms of the oxidized fossil kinds, such as copal, amber and others. From the Fiji Islands, where the natives use a liquid resin as a coating or glaze for their pottery, to the more advanced usages of the Japanese, in their beautiful lacquer ware, also the results of resinous products, a vast field in this line alone is spread out, offering ample room for the employment of the capital, enterprise and skill of thousands of our unemployed people.

GENERAL REMARKS.

In glancing with me in this general way at some of the valuable island products, the intelligent reader will no doubt agree with me in the assertion that it is but a glance. That a volume could be written on valuable products alone, and still another on their manifold uses, and again another on the mechanical appliances necessary for their more perfect manipulation in manufactories.

CHAPTER XV.

OCEANIC ETHNOGRAPHY.

See him from nature rising slow to Art!
To copy instinct then was reason's part:
Thus then to man the voice of nature spake-
Go, from the creatures thy instructions take;
Learn from the birds what food the thickets yield,
Learn from the beasts the physics of the field,
Thy arts of building from the bee receive;
Learn of the mole to plough, the worm to weave,
Learn from the little Nautilus to sail,

Spread the thin oar, and catch the driving gale.

POPE (Essay on Man).

OCEANIC RACES.

E shall use the term Oceanica in the sense in

WE which it is applied by many writers on Eth

nography, as describing all the land comprised between the coasts of Asia and America, including the East Indian Archipelago, the many smaller clusters of the Pacific, and the continent of New Holland.

The whole subject of the distinctions in race among the wild inhabitants who have settled on these countless islands—the “nomads of the sea,” as Professor Muller calls them-is even more intricate and involved than the differences among the nomads of the land. The languages of many of the tribes have never even been compared, and some of them are scarcely

known at all; so that all conclusions must necessarily, as yet, be very doubtful, and liable to much change hereafter.

There are at least two very different schools on this subject, each represented by high authority. One led by the celebrated William von Humboldt, assigns but two, or at most three, races of men to this immense range of inhabitable land—namely, the Malay, the Polynesian, and a race of Oriental negroes.

The other, represented by a scholar of great ability, Mr. J. Crawford, divides the inhabitants of Oceanica into five brown races, with lank hair, distinguished by varieties of language, and eight races of Oriental negroes. The tendency, however, of all late investigation, is toward the unity of these varieties, and modern conclusions approach those of Humboldt much more than those of Crawford.

Oceanica may be divided into five be divided into five great divisions: Malaisia, or the East Indian Islands, together with the peninsula of Mallacca, inhabited by the Malay race. Of these islands, the most prominent are Sumatra, Java, Borneo, Celebes, Mollucca, Sooloo, and the Phillippines.

Melanasia are the islands inhabited by a dark race with woolly or frizzled hair, comprising New Guinea, Aroo, Mysol and others, together with New Britain, New Ireland, the Solomon Isles, and New Hebrides.

Australia, or New Holland, a vast island, sparsely peopled by a black race with straight, smooth hair.

Micronesia, a long range of little groups of islands and strips of coral rock in the North Pacific, east of the Phillippines, including the Pelew, Caroline, Ladrone, Bonabe, and numerous other islands, from 132 deg.

east longitude to 178 deg. west, and from 21 deg. north latitude to 5 deg. south.

Polynesia, or the islands in the East Pacific, occupied by a race kindred to the Malay, of which the best known are the Navigators, the Friendly, Society and Sandwich Islands, together with New Zealand.

The great natural peculiarities of this quarter of the globe, which have determined the divisions of race and family, have been its insular character, the periodicity of its winds, and the malarious climate of some of the islands; while the existence of a people on its western border, with a highly flexible and euphonious language, and gifted with much enterprise (the Malay race), has affected the ruling stock through all this wide region. These nomads of the sea, whenever desiring adventure or seeking commerce or plunder, or driven forth by defeat or hunger, had only to put themselves and wives, with their few utensils, into their light canoes, and trust themselves to the prevailing trade winds, and they were certain finally to land on some new island, where they could either intermingle with the old inhabitants or form a new community. It is thus that the almost countless islands, from the Phillippines to Easter Island, through eight thousand miles of ocean, were peopled by a similar race.

There were certain of the islands which only admitted of the habitation of the black tribes, owing to the highly malarious character of the climate, and upon them especially these tribes are found.

CLIMATE.

The climate has probably protected them against the assaults of the more organized nations. Whether