466 Transactions. — Miscellaneous. 



breasts, the dug or teat of animals; suasusu, milk. So far 

 Polynesian proper : this is sufficiently well marked. Passing 

 outside Polynesia, we get Fijian sucu (suthu), to suck, the 

 breasts, to be born; kaususu, a female that has just been con- 

 fined : Malay proper, susu, milk : Kayan, usok, breasts : Java, 

 susu, breast : Bugis, susic, milk. The European forms of 

 "suck" — Anglo-Saxon siican, Latin sugere, Swedish s^/z/a — 

 compare with the Welsh sugno to suck, sug juice ; the Irish 

 sughaim I suck in, sugh juice. Skeat refers these to an 

 Aryan root SU, to beget (whence is derived sunu, a son), but, 

 when we find so many of these words meaning "sucking" and 

 "juice"* duplicated with the same sense in Polynesian 

 (above given), I think it may fairly be claimed that the idea 

 implied by the root is a mother suckling rather than bringing 

 forth. It will be noticed that the Fijian sitcii, means both to 

 suck and to be born, but it stands apart (so far as I know) in 

 this respect. The general idea is " moisture oozing forth," 

 but especially milk oozing forth from the teat. The idea of 

 giving suck to the young after birth is surely as old as the 

 idea of parturition. In Maori a compound word uicJia {u-ivha) 

 means the "female of beasts." Why? U means "teat," 

 and «'/ia means "four."f What four-teated animals did the 

 Polynesians ever know in Oceania? Certainly neither the 

 dog nor the pig answers to this description.! Eeturning 

 to the idea of "moisture oozing forth," I turn to the 

 Latin word mamma, the breast. In Maori we have maina, 

 to ooze through small apertures, to leak : Samoan, 7nama, 

 to leak : Tahitian, mama, to drop or leak, as thatch 

 of house ; aimuwia (for ka^i-mama), to chew food for a 

 child; aimama (kai-viama), to eat food chewed by the 

 mother : Tongan, mama, to leak, to chew : Marquesau, mama, 

 to chew : Mangarevan, mania, to leak, to chew. Polynesians 

 feed very young infants by chewing food and putting it into 

 the babies' mouths. The Latin mamma means not only " the 

 breast," but "mother" — two ideas closely related — and, 

 although the word mavnna for "mother" may be a mere 

 sound-word coined from a young child's cry, and therefore not 

 allied to " chewing," still the sense of " oozing," leaking, is in 

 the Polynesian mama as in susu or huku (im). 



"Teat:" This has been spelt in English in very many 



* Skeat remarks ("Soul," in "Ety. Diet.") that tlie word "sea" may, 

 as Curtius suggests, "be connected with \/ SU, to press out juice, which 

 appears to be identical with V SU, to generate, produce." 



t Tahitian ufa, female of brutes ; Mangarevan "ulia, female, applied 

 only to animals, &c., &c. 



I The IMaori ua, rain, shows that the Aryan universal image of the 

 clouds being " tlie cows " of heaven, dropping fcrtilit}', was known to the 

 Polynesians. Cf. the Cornish coi6'es = showers. 



