Abstract
THE immense area of the Pacific Basin comprises what is perhaps the most fascinating region of the globe. It is bounded on the east, on the north and, as far south as the equator, on the west by volcanic regions indicative of great geological instability. It includes open stretches of sea hundreds of thousands of square miles in extent and contains more than twenty thousand islands, some of them rocky, others volcanic and others again of coral origin. These islands have a distinctive and in many respects a unique fauna and flora. They are populated by most interesting native races, Polynesians, Melanesians and Micronesians, who, coming originally from south-east Asia, settled these widely scattered islands by the most remarkable of all human migrations. There they evolved a civilization which evoked the amazement of those early European navigators who, however unwittingly in many cases, sowed the first seeds of its subsequent rapid decay.
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The Sixth Pacific Science Congress. Nature 144, 640–641 (1939). https://doi.org/10.1038/144640a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/144640a0