DUISBURG  , a

town of Germany in the kingdom of Prussia, 15 M. by rail N. from Dusseldorf, between the Rhine and the Ruhr, with which rivers it communicates by a canal . It is an important railway centre . Pop . (1885) 47,519; (1900) 92,729; (1905), including many outlying townships then recently incorporated, 191,551 . It has six Roman Catholic and six Protestant churches, among the latter the fine Gothic Salvatorkirche, of the 15th century . It is well furnished with schools, which include a school of machinery . Of modern erections, the concert hall, the law courts and a memorial fountain to the cartographer Gerhard Kremer (Mercator) are worthy of mention . There are important foundries, rolling mills for copper, steel and brass plates, chemical works, saw-milling, shipbuilding, tobacco, cotton, sugar, soap and other manufactures . Duisburg was known to the Romans as Castrum Deutonis, and mentioned under the Frankish kings as Dispargum . In the 12th century it attained the rank of an imperial free town, but on being mortgaged in 1290 to Cleves it lost its privileges . At the beginning of the 17th century it was transferred to Brandenburg, and during the Thirty Years' War was alternately occupied by the Spaniards and the Dutch . In 1655 the elector Frederick' William of Brandenburg founded here a Protestant university, which flourished until 1802 .

DUK-DUK, a

secret society of New Britain or New Pomerania, Bismarck Archipelago, in the South Pacific . The society has religious and political as well as social objects . It represents a rough sort of law and order through its presiding spirit Duk-Duk, a mysterious figure dressed in leaves to its waist, with a helmet like a gigantic candle-extinguisher made of network . Upon this figure women and children are forbidden to look . Women, who are entitled in New Britain to their own earnings and work harder than men, are the special victims of Duk-Duk, who levies blackmail upon them if they are about during its visits . These are generally timed to coincide with the hours at which the women are out in the fields and therefore cannot help seeing the figure . Justice is executed, fines extorted, taboos, feasts, taxes and all tribal matters are arranged by the Duk-Duk members, who wear hideous masks or chalk their faces . In carrying out punishments they are allowed to burn houses and even kill people . Only males can belong to Duk-Duk, the entrance fees of which vary from 5o to 100 fathoms of dewarra (small cowrie shells strung on strips of cane) . The society has its secret signs and ritual, and festivals at which the presence of a stranger would mean his death . Duk-Duk only appears with the full moon . The society is now much discredited and is fast dying out .

See " Duk-Duk and other Customs or Forms of Expression of the Melanesian's Intellectual

Life," by Graf von Pfeil (Journ. of Anthrop . Instit. vol . 27, p . 181) .