File:The countries of the world - being a popular description of the various continents, islands, rivers, seas, and peoples of the globe (1876) (14780139995).jpg

Identifier: countriesofworld04brow (find matches)
Title: The countries of the world : being a popular description of the various continents, islands, rivers, seas, and peoples of the globe
Year: 1876 (1870s)
Authors: Brown, Robert, 1842-1895
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Publisher: London New York : Cassell, Petter, Galpin & co.
Contributing Library: University of California Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: Internet Archive

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ava made from the jicpper roots and stems on some of the islands is very much inferior to the other. THE POLYXESI.VX AXIIIALS. 17 ox, ass, sheep, and domestic cat, which are found in most of them, and sometimes ingreat abundance, having been introduced by Europeans within a comparatively recent period.In New Guinea is found a native species of pig, the Siis Pajjiie/nis, of a brown colour.It lives in the woods, but may be often seen swimming from one bay to another amono-the islands along the coast, and in the same island there are i^robably several otherindigenous quadrupeds of the Australian type, to which its zoology approximates—amongothers a small kangaroo, an opossum, various bats and rats, &c. In the Louisade and theSamoan, or Navigator Islands, there is a species of wild dog, which does not bark, but,according to Macgillivray, has the long, melancholy howl of the dingo, or wild dog ofAustralia. In most of the Polynesian Islands rats appear to be namerous, and are eaten by
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6^ *m AX AVENUE OF BAXAXA BtSHES IN THE ISI.iXD OF TAHITI. the natives. Among the mangrove forests of Fiji ilits a huge bat (Xofojjieris Macdonaldi),measuring a yard between the extreme points of the wings, and in the Samoan groupis a closely allied species, which is a great pet with the natives, who domesticate itabout their dwellings. In Savage Island the vampire bats are esteemed delicate eating.Lastly, in the seas around nearly all the islands are found various species of whale, andchief among these the spermaceti, which is still pursued to a considerable extent, thoughnothing like what it was thirty or forty years ago.* None of the Polynesian islandsproper can claim any bird so strange and gigantic as the Moa, or Linornls and Palapteryx,which, report has it, yet exists in the more secluded parts of New Zealand, and which, atall events, became extinct only within comparatively recent times, and long after the * Beale : The Natural History of the Sperm AVhaln (1S39), where may also

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