Contents

COVER : What is she snapping? It is not the two couples getting married in the double wedding ceremony in American Samoa, for they are visible in the top of the steps. It must be a relative, and there are no shortage of them in Samoa, where the extended family is supremely important.
CONTENTS - Features :
POSTCARD FROM SAMOA [Hospitable people, spectacular scenery, but does fa’a Samoa (the traditional authority structure governing how almost everything is done) need to be so oppressive?]
SOME LIKE IT HOT [In boiling pools, cattle stomachs and searing salt flats a group of strange bacteria are comfortably at home. They have surprising economic potential, but scientists now believe that some of this group, the thermophilic archaebacteria, may resemble the first organisms to have existed on Earth];
SEA LIONS - PRIDE OF THE SOUTHERN SEAS [Notebook-sized transmitters that can contact a satellite and recorders that chart diving depths are giving us new insights into how the New Zealand sea lion spends its time around the Auckland Islands]; CLIMBING THE WALL [Isolated in Fiordland’s Darran Mountains, the 1000-metre-high Kaipo Wall is New Zealand’s highest rock face. Two young Aucklanders accompanied by a photographer made a bid to be only the second team to master this formidable climb];
CONTENTS - Departments :
LETTERS; EDITOR’S COMMENT; GEONEWS [Using gravity for mapping; flatfish farming; science fair projects in 1996]; SPACE [Comet Hale-Bopp]; WEATHER [the ghost of cyclones past]; BOOKS [the backyard in history; the longitude and the short of it]; COMING UP;