range, are entirely free from the animals enumerated, excepting the monkey tribes, and in Australia the kangaroo.

Another parallel can be traced, running north and south and still further east, through the island groups of the Society, Tongas, Fijis, Samoas, Marshalls, New Hebrides and the Carolines, where hardly any animal larger than the dog or rat, can be found native to the soil. These parallels are followed just as closely by the reptilian and feathered tribes.

The latter, whose migratory powers are well known all over the world, seem curiously to draw the species line of locality or habitation, as closely as those of the animal kingdom. In the Bird of Paradise we find a marked instance. Their native home is New Guinea, where as many as twenty of this species of birds may be found, and are hardly ever to be met with in any of the other island groups.

This follows, also, in nearly as strictly defined lines, with the inhabitants of Oceanica. The people of Borneo, Java, Sumatra and the Molluccas partake of the Malay, Hindoo and Chinese, being all, in a comparative sense, a maritime people.

At Australia this race element ceases altogether. The natives are bushmen, and root-diggers, with no knowledge of navigation; not canoe-builders, or fishermen, nor in any way resembling a people who "go down to the sea in ships." The same is true of the New Zealander and the Tasmanian. Yet, but a little to the north, on New Guinea, and in the Carolines, the natives have some knowledge of canoe-building, sailing and maritime ventures. So on through the Molluccas and Phillippines, into Japan, where the art of ship-building and navigation, as among the islanders

of the Pacific, may be said to have been brought to comparative perfection.

East from Australia, in the Solomon Archipelago, and among the Marshall islanders, the Samoans, in fact, as far east as the island groups extend, north and south of the line, the Asiatic features are prominent. The inhabitants are expert canoe and boat builders, with considerable knowledge of navigation, making long voyages in their little crafts with lateen sails and outriggers to windward, and altogether perfectly at home on the water. These people, with the exception of the Fijis, and others of the wooly-headed type, have the features and many of the characteristics of the Chinese and Japanese-probably coming from those countries, making the grand circles of the ocean currents, with favoring winds, at very early periods.

The many wrecks of Japanese vessels found in the Northern Pacific, following the line of the ocean currents clear into the island groups, seems important evidence in favor of the above statement.

A like statement may be made of the maritime ventures of the Chinese, south of the equator, many traces of whose early settlements, habits and architecture are to be found in South America.

This would account for the absence of animal life of the larger kind on the easterly islands, as the length of the voyages, together with the small size of the shipping of the earlier periods, would make the carrying of animals almost an impossibility.

The prevailing winds follow the course of the currents through the equatorial regions of the Pacific from east to west. Assuming the movements of the ocean streams to be twenty-one miles per day, and

that favoring winds would add to the floating powers of a boat or canoe fifteen miles a day additional, we would have a favoring drift from east to west of thirty-six miles per day. Thus we might assume, that a journey of 1,000 miles per month could be made without the aid of sails or oars. Against such favoring circumstances it does not seem possible for a people without the modern appliances of steam and sail, to migrate.

Many traces of ruins of architecture, similar in form to the pyramidal structures of the ancient Peruvians and Chilians, are to be found in some of the islands, on Ascension particularly. Great blocks of hewn granite are to be found, with other forms of building stone, scattered over the ground in many places, and lying under water in some of the harbors. It was thought at one time that these had been transported from great distances, and that the geological formations of the material were foreign to anything to be found on the islands. Closer research, however, revealed the quarries from which the stones had been taken, located in the interior of the islands where such ruins were discovered.*

This fact has spoiled many curious, mysterious theories that were advanced in regard to the building material, and leaves us but to account for the people whose intelligence and skill, indicates their source to be from countries foreign to these islands. From the data (a review of which would but tire the reader) obtained on this subject, the race origin of many of the islanders of Oceanica is clearly indicated to be Chinese and Japanese.

*The stone implements, with the hieroglyphical writing and drawings on the rocks, found on Pitcairn by the Bounty mutineers, may help, some day, to trace the history of the ancient islanders

THE EQUATORIAL CURRENTS.

As my purpose has been throughout this work to present facts, untrammeled by personal opinion, for the consideration of the reader, I add a few notes below, taken from experiences and researches of others, that may modify or change altogether some of the ideas already advanced:

The famous volcanic eruption on the island of Krakatoa, just west of Java, a year since, startled the civilized portion of the world with the "blue" and "red" and other "strange sunsets and sunrisings" it caused. Just now, a year after date, Ponape is gathering up some of the products of that eruption; large beds of pumice-stone, in places, are covering the sea with its gray hue, as if an immense blanket were spread out. Months since, I saw an account of one of the harbors, near that eruption, filled with this material ten feet deep, and almost as compact as an ice-floe. The winds, and especially the currents, have taken some of that disgorged mass and floated it to our Ponape reefs. A remarkable fact about this is the continuity of an easterly or northeasterly set of the ocean's current near the line. No doubt masses of the ejected pumice will float along on the same current to the shores of South America, more than half way belting the earth. Our natives call it "sea-fruit," for they have no idea where or how it was gendered, but suppose the sea is the mother.

To some of the sandy coral islands lying in the track, it will be a very god-send. The material is gathered, crushed, and put on beds of taro as a fertilizer. Mere sand-beaches, or banks, furnish but little to fertilize vegetation.

But Krakatoa, or Krakatao, has other interests to Ponape. The word is of two syllables-the first, the specific name, and tao or tau, meaning "strait;" hence the term means "Kraka of the strait." But tao or tau is pure Ponapian, and here also means a strait-a passage of water. Java, then, and Ponape are bloodrelated. Indeed, centuries and centuries since, at least as far back as when Solomon was king, Java had another kind of eruption, sending off here ever so many of her vocables. But recently I counted more than fifty of these, some of them names of places on this island. These vocables, of course, took passage with the Malay tongue. And now Java is sending fields of pumice-stone. Some day those who are on the east of her must send back or set afloat to her, truths from God's Word.

(Rev. Edw. T. Doane, Ponape, Micronesia).

This would indicate an equatorial current flowing from west to east, in an opposite direction to, and between, the two great ocean currents of the Pacific. The speed of the current would be about eight miles per day, if we estimate the distance from the island of Java to that of Ponape to be 3,000 miles.

Again-from Wallace, Muller, Dr. A. B. Meyer, Schouw-Santvoort, Proc. Roy. Geo. Soc., 1881, and Ency. Brit., vol. 15, I quote the following:

Long considered as an independent division of mankind, the Malays are now more generally affiliated to the Mongol stock-of which A. R. Wallace, De Quatrefages and other eminent naturalists regard them as a simple variety, more or less modified by mixture with other elements. These considerations also enable us to fix the true centre of dispersion of