"Australasia" by Alfred Russel Wallace
AUG. 2, 1879.] THE ACADEMY. 77 SATURDAY, AUGUST 2, 1879. takes the opportunity of giving in some detail the author that the Dutch claim to the western a clear explanation, aided by sections, of the half of New Guinea is "well supported," No. 378, New Series. character and mode of formation of the gold being founded merely on a series of coast deposits, and also of that " desert sandstone" surveys, and on their claim to suzerainty over which covers such vast tracts in the interior, the chiefs of some small neighbouring islands. though he does not account for the absence It must have been by an oversight that, in of fossils from this formation. Again, after his sketch of the history of Java, Mr. Wallace explaining and speculating on the many makes no mention of the period of English remarkable characteristics of the flora, he occupancy under Sir Stamford Raffles, to describes the peculiar plants which form the whose enlightened administration the island different varieties of " bush" and "scrub," owes so much, and whose Reports are still so thus enabling the reader to whom these terms valuable. We find, too, occasional repeti have been hitherto mere names to form a tions, and a few inconsistent statements. For comparatively vivid conception of their ap instance, at p. 569, we read that " the native pearance, and of the difficulties of Australian rat, which entered New Zealand with the LITERATURE. travelling. Maories, is now being extirpated by the Nor Mr. Wallace gives all the necessary sta way variety;" but we had read, on p.
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