Abstract
IN connection with Mr. Wragge's work as Government Meteorologist of Queensland, he paid a visit to New Caledonia, with the view of establishing a weather-observing station there. In this book he gives an account of his visit to the island, and also to Rarotonga and Tahiti. We wish there were more information in the book about the meteorological results of his journey. The volume contains instead simply a chatty account of the islands; and the most interesting matter is the author's visit to the convict prisons in New Caledonia. At Tahiti he paid a pilgrimage to Point Venus, where Cook on June 3, 1769, observed the transit of Venus. The author is enthusiastic over the scenery in both islands, and the only thing that justifies the mention of “romance” in the title is the spell of their scenery. The author's style is very discursive, and the book is full of smoke-room gossip and snatches of sailors' songs. It is illustrated by some good photographs, and in an appendix is a list of some shells and corals which the author collected in the Society Islands.
The Romance of the South Seas.
By Clement L. Wragge. Pp. xv + 312, with 84 illustrations. (London: Chatto and Windus, 1906.) Price 7s. 6d. net.
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The Romance of the South Seas . Nature 74, 53 (1906). https://doi.org/10.1038/074053c0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/074053c0