304 Transactions. — Miscellaneous. 



by lot " ; so that the division is not yu and nawele, but pzma 

 and roele^oele. 



In Maori weretoere means " hanging, pendulous," and ap- 

 pears related to here, " to tie up," " to fasten with cords," and 

 generally in Polynesian {hele, sele, cle, ere, &c.) to words sig- 

 nifying "a snare or noose." The Tahitian verevere means 

 " thin, gauze-like." and the Fijian vere " entangled, confused," 

 vereverea " intricate, entangling," the Easter Island vere " the 

 beard," and Aulua (New Hebrides) verevere " a fishing-line." 

 (The Maori meaning "hanging, pendulous" shows a rever- 

 sionary implication with the other Indo-European value of the 

 root \/LAB — viz., " to droop, hang down," which, in Enghsh, 

 gives us " lobe," " limp," &c.) These meanings of vere make 

 it likely that jnmgawereivere or pualeveleve did not originally 

 apply to the spider but to its web — to the fine capturing-lines 

 of the cobweb. 



If, as we have seen above, latva — in Hawaiian, " to bind " 

 — exchanges with lawe, " to take " ; if Maori rawa, " goods, 

 property," is related to ratve, "to acquire property," then 

 Maori rau, "to catch in a net," is probably on the same root — 

 viz., a/EAB or LAV (the Indo-European root a/EAB or LAB, 

 " to seize ") — and the radical meaning of Malay lawalawa, 

 " the spider," is " seizing, catching." 



This, then, brings us to the only consideration that results 

 from the diligent pursuit of the word through Protean changes 

 — viz.. Is the word Asiatic or Oceanic? Did the Indo-Euro- 

 pean word lalasrava, " a sj)ider," losing its original meaning 

 of "distilling saliva," work its way eastward to the Malay 

 Islands, the Philippines, and the South Seas? Or is it pos- 

 sible that the Polynesian word ravarava, or varavara (or vele- 

 vele), meaning " seizing," passed through those islands in a 

 westerly course and " went ashore " in Asia, to be adopted by 

 a people speaking an Aryan dialect, and to be altered in pro- 

 nunciation slightly, so as to fit a supposed etymology from 

 words signifying " distilling saliva " ? 



