Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 52.djvu/31

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SEMON'S RESEARCHES IN AUSTRALIA.
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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 Mackenzie habits of life, racial peculiarities, tribal organization, religious ideas, and superstitions.

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

Oars of New Guineans.

of specimens made by Professor Semon is so extensive and extremely characteristic as to render the Zoölogical 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 an Australian zoölogist came to the picturesque university town on the Saale for the purpose of examining one of the fauna of his native land.