Tregear. — Myths of Observation. 579 



Note. — In the list of the manuscripts presented by Sir 

 George Grey to the Capetown library, South Africa, there is a 

 diary kept by a Mr. John Cook, who resided on the island for 

 six months in 1850. 



I have also a memorandum as follows: " 'A Sojourn on the 

 Macquarrie Islands, and Sufferings of the Hunters ' : Capt. 

 Sinclair ; October, 1877-8." This, I suppose, will be an 

 account of the wreck of the schooner "Bencleugh," but I 

 cannot find the description. 



Art. LXVI. — Myths of Observation. 

 By Edward Tregear. 



'Read before the Wellington Pliilosophical Society, 19th September, 



1894.] 



Those who have written on the transmission of the Hebrew 

 Scriptures tell us concerning the sacred books that the utmost 

 jealousy was observed in regard to a single "jot or tittle" 

 being omitted or added ; that any such departure from faith- 

 fulness in transcription was sufficient to bring about the de- 

 struction of the imperfect copy. There are some who deny 

 the possibility of any great accuracy in regard to tradition, 

 they apparently having imbibed the notion that unwritten 

 story, passed from one to another, must necessarily have lost 

 or gained much in personal transfer. This may to some extent 

 be an idea based on insufficient evidence, and arising from too 

 close arguing on lines of analogy drawn from individual expe- 

 rience. It is made certain by the legends collected at the 

 present day all over the world that tradition may be orally 

 transmitted, if not with the word-accuracy which renders the 

 Jewish record so valuable, still with a verisimilitude and 

 faithfulness of description which would make many of our 

 literary " eye-witness " stories seem very misleading and 

 doubtful in comparison. For hundreds of years, from priest 

 to disciple, from Brahmin to Brahmin's son, has the Big- Veda 

 been handed down in India side by side with the written text, 

 but with the oral version deemed more sacred and kept more 

 jealously than the script itself. So has the Kalevala been 

 transmitted for centuries, from old days before the Finns 

 turned from heathendom, and the great epic has only been 

 collected and pieced together during this generation. 



The Polynesians, who have been separated and scattered 

 so long that their language (which is at base but one) has 



