400 Transactions. — Miscellaneous. 



Art. XLVII. — The dry o- Semitic Maori. 



[A Eeply.] 



By E. Teegear, F.E.G.S. 



[Read before the Welliiifiton Philosophical Society, 11th January, 1888.] 



In the last volume of the " Transactions " (xix.) there appeared 

 a paper under the title of " The Aryo- Semitic Maori," by Mr. 

 A. S. Atkinson, of Nelson, on the subject of the origin of the 

 Maori race, and my writings thereon. ... I will attempt 

 to answer, in as few sentences as possible, the main objections 

 made by Mr. Atkinson. 



First, as to the method, a method nicknamed " The Method 

 of Insight." The writer says, in effect, that I claim that my 

 system is a delightfully easy mode of derivation and interpreta- 

 tion, merely being the comparison of surface resemblances. If 

 I stated that, for the reader of my little book the result was easy 

 to understand, it by no means followed that the work necessary 

 to produce such results was easy in its process. It is averred 

 by others, (who are followers of the "high and dry" school of 

 philology, and who seem to think that all human knowledge has 

 been digested and absorbed by themselves,) that any two 

 languages may be compared phonetically and resemblances be 

 found. If any one of these persons will take the 7,000 words hi 

 Williams' " New Zealand Dictionary " and compare them with, 

 say Esquimaux, or Mexican, he will have no " delightfully easy " 

 task. Better still, a language like the Tlatskanai (Athabascan), 

 quoted by Canon Farrar, wherein kholsiakatatkhusin = tooth, 

 and kholzotkhltzitzkhltsaha = tongue, when compared with Maori, 

 would be a pursuit of no light character, although, as I said of 

 my work, the result would be easy for the reader to follow. 



Can it be proved that the phonetic method of comparison 

 utterly fails ? or that it fails at all ? The more one learns, the 

 more one reads, there comes one crushing dominating idea, the 

 immense antiquity of the human race on the earth. Professor 

 Sayce, who stands amongst the highest of authorities, says (in 

 the last number of the " Journal of the Anthropological 

 Society") that he once made a calculation as to the time 

 since man had been a speaking animal, and he assigned forty 

 thousand years. I must say I feel sympathy with another 

 writer, who has said that those who are hunting for deriva- 

 tions in written records are but " scratching about on the 

 surface " of human speech : words, as symbols of things, 

 had their birth in ages compared with whose antiquity all 

 books, all rock inscriptions, all alphabets and picture writings 

 are but the work of yesterday. With deep reverence for the 

 learned, devoted students of historical research, we must come 



