Fijian Students' Examination Papers

Lorimer Fison (1832-1907) was born on 9 November 1832. He entered Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, in 1855, but departed that year for Australia. He was ordained a Wesleyan minister in 1863, and worked as a missionary in Fiji, 1863-1871, during which time he studied native kinship. Fison carried out anthropological research in New South Wales and Victoria, Australia, 1871-1875, and in Fiji, 1875-1884. He lived in Melbourne from 1888 to 1905, and died at Essenden, Victoria, on 29 December 1907.

Answers to examination papers in geography, scripture and arithmetic done by Fijian students at the Mission Training Institution, Navuola, Fiji, 1882, 36 folios. The answers, in Fijian, are fair copies made by the examinees themselves, and are written on the recto. Opposite these is an English translation, with the questions, presumably by Lorimer Fison, who has added an explanatory note at the beginning. Fos 34-36, presumably from the same source, containing a set of original answers in Fijian to an arithmetic paper, with English questions and translations added in the margin: these were posted in Fiji on 10 November 1879 to Robert Potts in Cambridge. Loose in the volume is a second set of fair copies of answers in Fijian, with the English translation opposite, of a similar character, 35 folios.

Received from the collection of Henry Bradshaw, 1886.

Please cite as Cambridge University Library, Department of Manuscripts and University Archives, Fijian Students' Examination Papers, MS Add.4373