The Papuan is both ingenious and industrious when working in his own interest, and with tactful management he becomes a faithful and fairly efficient laborer. Perhaps the most serious defect in the present system of employment in Papua is the usually long interval between payments. The natives are not paid at intervals of less than one month and, often, not until the expiration of their three-year term of service. With almost no knowledge of arithmetic and possessed of a fund which seems large beyond the dreams of avarice, he is practically certain to be cheated by the dishonest tradesmen who flock vulture-like to centers of commercial activity. This evil might be in large measure prevented were the natives to be paid at monthly intervals, for they would then gradually become accustomed to the handling of money and would gain an appreciation of its actual value.
Generations must elapse before more than a moderate degree of civilization is developed in Papua, but the foundations are being surely and conservatively laid, and already in the civilized centers natives respect and loyally serve their British friends and masters.
In common with many another British colony, the safeguard of Papua lies not in the rifles of the whites, but in the loyal hearts of the natives themselves, and in Papua, as in Fiji, the native constabulary under the leadership of a mere handful of Europeans may be trusted to maintain order in any emergency. As Governor Murray truly states in his interesting book "Papua, or British New Guinea," the most valuable asset the colony possesses is not its all but unexplored mineral wealth or the potential value of its splendid forests and rich soil, but it is the Papuans themselves, and let us add that under the leadership of the high-minded, self-sacrificing and well-trained civil servants of Great Britain the dawn of Papuan civilization is fast breaking into the sunlight of a happiness such as has come to but few of the erstwhile savage races of the earth.
Without belittling the nobility of purpose or disregarding the self-sacrificing devotion of the missionary for his task, let us also grant to the civil servant his due share of praise. His duty he also performs in the dangerous wilds of the earth; beset with insidious disease, stifling in unending heat, exiled from home and friends, with suspicious savages around him, he labors with waning strength in that struggle against climate wherein the ultimate ruin of his body is assured. Yet in his heart there lives, growing as years elapse, the English gentleman's ideal of service, and for him it is sufficient that, though he is to be invalided and forgotten even before he dies, yet his will have been one of those rare spirits who have extended to the outer world his mother country's ideal of justice and fair play.
CONTACT ELECTRIFICATION AND THE ELECTRIC CURRENT
BY PROFESSOR FERNANDO SANFORD
STANFORD UNIVERSITY
IN a previous paper in this journal, entitled "The Discovery of Contact Electrification" (November, 1913), it was shown that the production of electric charges by the mere contact of two dissimilar metals was first discovered by Rev. Abraham Bennett, in 1789, and that it was verified by a different method by Tiberius Cavallo, in 1795. Meantime, in 1791, Dr. Galvani discovered the twitching of a frog's muscle, due to electrical stimulus. Galvani's discovery was described by himself as follows:[1]
[1] Translation from "Makers of Electricity," p 143.
'I had dissected a frog and had prepared it, as in Figure 2 of the fifth plate, and had placed it upon a table on which there was an electric machine, while I set about doing certain other things. The frog was entirely separated from the conductor of the machine, and indeed was at no small distance away from it. While one of those who were assisting me touched lightly and by chance the point of his scalpel to the internal crural nerves of the frog, suddenly all the muscles of its limbs were seen to be so contracted that they seemed to have fallen into tonic convulsions. Another of my assistants, who was making ready to take up certain experiments in electricity with me, seemed to notice that this happened only at the moment when a spark came from the conductor of the machine. He was struck by the novelty of the phenomenon, and immediately spoke to me about it, for I was at the moment occupied with other things and mentally preoccupied. I was at once tempted to repeat the experiment, so as to make clear whatever might be obscure in it. For this purpose I took up the scalpel and moved its point close to one or the other of the crural nerves of the frog, while at the same time one of my assistants elicited sparks from the electric machine. The phenomenon happened exactly as before. Strong contractions took place in every muscle of the limb, and at the very moment when the sparks appeared, the animal was seized as it were with tetanus.'