SCIENCE CONGRESS.

Waikato Times, Volume 98, Issue 15318, 20 August 1923, Page 5

SCIENCE CONGRESS.

PACIFIC PROBLEMS DISCUSSED. A SHEEP BREEDING SUGGESTION. United Press Association. MELBOURNE, August 18. The Congress discussed Pacific problems. Dr. Crumpston stated that owing to inadequate understanding of tropioal diseases tlie natives of the Pacific Islands were dying out, and their places were being taken by coolies from India and Ceylon. The inevitable result would "be that higher types would follow and later, there would be a huge international conflict in the Pacific He urged the study of tropioal diseases, and the preservation of native races.

Mr. Skinner, (Otago) said that Dunedin had established a lectureship in ethnology. No Australian universityhad done so. Only now was New Zealand obtaining authentic information regarding the Maori race. Dr. Buck strongly pleaded for increased study of physical anthropology in the Pacific Islands. A working scheme was . wanted, which would allow concentration by Investigators on specified areas. Professor Ewart, of Edinburgh, outlining the history of the merino sheep, urged that experiments should be made in Australia of a cross between the merino and the fat-tailed sheep of Asia, which subsist for drought periods for years on the fat of their tails, in much the same way as a camel on the store of fat in its hump. Dootor Cumpston, in a quarantine paper, said that in 1918 influenza imported into Samoa from New Zealand caused the death of twenty por cent of the population. Proper measures of quarantine could prevent ovorseas transmission of epidemic diseases. Island groups with maritime communication with Australia escaped in 1918, while groups communicating with New Zealand suffered severely.