42 EASTER ISLAND. 



to such an extent as to bar us from deriving determining conclusions 

 from the comparison. These are: 



In like manner we shall exclude those items in which we can detect 

 error in the definitions which our authorities have set down. Recog- 

 nizing the existence of this error we avoid employment of it to a wrong 

 result, but we do not feel justified in correcting it without confirmation 

 from some authority. These are: 



mahaga pokopoko poro taha 2 tiaki i 



In the remainder which is available for the determination of the 

 relation of Rapanui to the Proto-Samoan we find two items, haiga and 

 tarotaro, in which the Rapanui word expresses a specific detail or 

 particularization of the general sense preserved in Nuclear Polynesia. 

 Associable herewith is a single instance, rarama, in which Rapanui has, 

 through independent processes of evolution, arrived at a secondary 

 stage of the primal sense, the deviation being in a direction opposite to 

 the particularization of the previously mentioned class. 



In final residuum we are left with eleven vocables of the utmost value 

 in our research, namely : 



uki 

 varevare 



In the vocables of this list one character is constant and distinctive ; 

 each presents the word in a type more primal than is to be found for the 

 same word in any of the descendant languages as now spoken in the 

 province of Nuclear Polynesia. Now join to this constant character of 

 the inner content of the word-sense whatever we may discover as to 

 form; that is to say, associate herewith the phonetic record. It is not 

 much, just the single fact that iko is found in modern Samoan as i'ofi, 

 but it points in the same direction ; it shows that Rapanui hived off with 

 the stem ikof and has lost its final consonant, while Samoa at a later 

 period acquired the device of the structural i and thus has preserved its 

 final stem consonant. 



That which we may deduce from this incontestible residue is that in 

 sense and form the Proto-Samoan element in Rapanui represents an 

 older and more primitive type than is shown in the modern languages 

 of Nuclear Polynesia. Another form of statement of the same result 

 of research is that a migration of Proto-Samoans left Nuclear Poly- 

 nesia, and many little points indicate with strength of concurrence that 

 Samoa itself was the point of departure that this migration faced 



