382 The Philippine Journal of Science 1920 
laoet (laoet=ocean), waroe lenga, and waroe lengis. These 
‘names are from Dutch sources, and it should be borne in mind | 
that in Dutch orthography oe represents the sound w. 
As noted above, the authors state that it may be doubted 
whether names like vahu, balibago, and pago, used in Fiji, the 
Philippine Islands, and Guam, belong in the maho series, but con- 
sider that the relation seems possible in view of the intermediate 
Polynesian forms like bago, faga, and haga. They do not discuss 
the Malayan names enumerated above, but with the statement 
that they appear to connect with the Malayan and Polynesian 
series they list the following names from Madagascar and neigh- 
boring islands: baro, var, varo, vau, and vaur. Among the 
names in use in India, barid and baru are suggestively like many 
of the Malayan, Mascarene, and Polynesian names. 
Not being qualified personally to discuss the philological ques- 
tions involved, and yet confident on purely botanical grounds 
that Hibiscus tiliaceus is a strand plant of natural pantropic 
distribution, at my request Prof. H. Otley Beyer, of the depart- 
ment of anthropology, University of the Philippines, and Mr. 
E. E. Schneider, of the Philippine Bureau of Forestry, have 
examined Cook’s paper and my notes on which this article 
is based. Both of these men are authorities on Philippine lan- 
guages and both are deeply interested in the comparative phil- 
ology of Indo-Malayan, Philippine, and Polynesian languages. 
Professor Beyer, whom I first consulted, has called my attention 
to the fact that the Polynesian mao series may well have been 
derived from some of the Malayan forms by the suppression 
of consonants, which is a fundamental characteristic of the 
Polynesian group of languages as contrasted with the Malayan 
languages. It seems to me to be entirely probable that the orig- 
inal form or root in the Indo-Malayan region was some word 
like bago or baru. It is to be noted that with the substitution of 
m, f, and v for the initial b, and h for g or r, or the suppression 
of the latter two letters, we have a series of names that ap- 
proximate the Polynesian mao series given by Cook as mao, mau, 
au, hau, fau, and vau. The probabilities are very great that all 
of the Polynesian mao series are merely modifications of the 
Indo-Malayan bago series; and that the Polynesians in their 
migration, having adopted the name while in the Indo-Malayan 
region, merely applied it to the wild plant which they found 
all over Polynesia. It would seem, therefore, that this root has 
nothing to do with the tropical American maho series, the resem- 
blances being merely accidental. The bago origin of the mao 
