The small-scale pastoral ancl commercial community of Victoria in 1850 did not need a stock exchange; by 1900, however, the institution was a well-developed one. How did this change come about? Throughout the greater part of the period 1850-1900 the predominant business of the share market was in mining securities. Gold-mining developments made possible the formation of Melbourne{u2019}s first stock exchange in 1861. Increasing activity in gold-mining shares enabled its successor (1865-84) to establish itself in a more enduring way.

The Emigrant Family was first published in three volumes in 1849, with a second edition, titled Martin Beck after its villain and dominant character, appearing in 1852. The appeal of this romantic novel set in New South Wales in the 1830s is no longer limited to literary historians.

Covering an area of the Pacific Ocean larger than the continental United States, the more than 2,000 islands and atolls of Micronesia - a United Nations strategic trust territory under U.S. trusteeship - are emerging as a political entity. Their history since the Spanish discovery in the seventeenth century is a parade of colonial rule - Spanish, German, Japanese, and now American. Today, the many islands and their diverse peoples are confronting the awesome task of determining their political future.

This is a study of kinship and conflict among a group of Aborigines who only recently abandoned their nomadic existence to live on a government settlement. Given the current rate of change in Australia, it will be among the last first-hand accounts of traditional Aboriginal social life. The book has two main aims. The first is to correct the impression that Aborigines are automata mechanically following tribal law in everything they do, or, as it has been put recently, 'algebraic electronic computets ticking away with no problem to solve.

Mekeo is a study of the organisation of a Melanesian village society. Dr Hau'ofa lived for some time among the Mekeo, a people from the Port Moresby area, studying their society and learning their language, and this book reports the results of his work. It contains valuable insights on their attitudes to such matters as sorcery, marriage and notions of good and evil. The book{u2019}s central theme, however, is the ascribed inequality in Mekeo society.

Is economics a science? This distinguished and provocative book calls into question the increasing tendency of economists to attach themselves to the coat-tails of the scientists. Thus it is not concerned with the scientific method in economics, but with the relation of scientific method to economic method, of scientific explanation to economic explanation; for to discover the cause of a phenomenon or of an event is to explain it.

The first part of the book reviews the development of regional planning authorities and policies in New South Wales and Victoria since 1944, with respect to the regional components of statutory planning and policies concerned with decentralisation, regional growth centres, system cities and satellite towns. The involvement of the Commonwealth Government in the field of regional planning is also examined. The second part of the book discusses the Albury- Wodonga growth centre, which was instituted as a joint Commonwealth-State project in 1973.

The Handbook of Australian Government and Politics 1975-1984 is a sequel to two earlier volumes published in 1968 and 1977 and covering the years 1890-1964 and 1965-1974 respectively. Both have become standard research tools for Australian historians and political scientists. The present volume follows the same format - cabinet and portfolio lists, then voting information for each election between 1975 and 1984. However it adds information on Legislative Council elections over the period, not included in the earlier volumes.