424 Transactions. — Miscellaneous. 



a quarrel of two, as of two cocks." Our "quarrel in which 

 few take part " turns out to be a cock-fight, and to have 

 nothing to do with the Dinomis. 



The last word necessary to mention is the Maori word 

 ivhaka-toamoa, " an insulting dance used to incite warriors 

 to deeds of bloodshed." We need only consider how toa, 

 used as " to be valiant," and wliaha-toa, " to incite, to stir 

 up," is common in Polynesia ; how toa is the domestic fowl 

 in some islands, and how the Tahitian faa-toa, "to crow 

 together," also means " to make warlike," to understand how 

 the Maori dance, used to incite to deeds of bloodshed, has this 

 extraordinary combination of the two words for the fighting- 

 cock — viz., toa and moa. 



I have thus, then, covered as nearly as possible the field of 

 knowledge concerning the comparative value of the word 

 moa, so far as our present acquaintance with Polynesian dia- 

 lects allows a student to do. 



In conclusion, I would suggest it to be desirable if we could 

 look at this question for awhile through a more impersonal 

 medium. We have become so used to view the subject from 

 one side or the other, to examine it so constantly through the 

 spectacles of one learned man or another, that our conclusions 

 receive a continuous personal or local colouring. I will appeal 

 to your imaginations, and ask you to consider the locality of 

 argument shifted. We will suppose ourselves for a little while 

 on some unnamed island. It is inhabited by a people who 

 speak our own English dialect of Low Dutch, but they have 

 no written records. They are known by tradition to be im- 

 migrants to the island, and they have no quadruped larger 

 than the rat. Some scientific men visit them, and find in 

 situ the bones of mammoths. On appealing to the natives, 

 the scientists are informed that these must be the bones 

 of a creature called "the hound"; that it is mentioned in 

 a few verses of very old songs and proverbs, such as "Lost 

 like the losing of the hound" ; "Lost as the hound has been 

 lost" ; but their old men add, " Neither we nor our fathers 

 ever saw the hound, because the hounds were all destroyed at 

 the time of the Deluge." The geologists and naturalists say 

 to them, " You must have known this creature (the mam- 

 moth) ; its bones are found on the very surface of the ground ; 

 nay, with sinews and integuments still adhering." The tradi- 

 tionalists and the naturalists are at strife, unable to reconcile 

 the legends with the (apparently) recent destruction of the 

 animal. The philologist then steps forward and says, "It 

 may be true that the natives once called the mammoth ' the 

 hound,' but let us go outside the island, and see if we can find 

 traces of the name ' hound ' among the brothers of these 

 natives, among men who speak dialects of the one Teutonic 



