412 Transactions. — Miscellaneous. 



Mr. Atkinson makes this assertion, (satirically, of course,) not 

 I, because I know, as everybody does, that the modern Maori 

 meaning of po is "night," and "Hades." But that a bird 

 should be named after a bull is not without precedent, the 

 English bird, the bittern [Botaurus stellaris), being named doubly 

 after the bull — the derivation of bittern being supposed to be 

 from bos and taurus — perhaps from its booming, bellowing cry ; 

 but it seems almost as ridiculous, at first, to associate togetber 

 the idea of a bull and a wading-bird as a bull and a parrot. In 

 this paper I will not enter hito the question of the Maori having 

 been acquainted with cattle, because I hope next session to deal 

 with the subject exhaustively, on account of information gatbered 

 from all parts of Polynesia and from ancient writings ; but I 

 will in a few words put the argument into such a shape as will 

 deprive it of any idea of improbability. If the Maoris migrated 

 to Polynesia, they probably came from one of the great con- 

 tinents. If Mr. Atkinson and his party reject the evidence of 

 tradition, and its universal consensus in tbe South Seas as to 

 the migration hitherwards, I have no more to say. But, if they 

 came from some other place, where was that place in which 

 they had no knowledge of cattle ? In Europe, the haunt of the 

 aurochs and urus ? In Asia, the home of the pastoral tribes 

 and cattle-tending nomads ? In Africa, the dwelling of the 

 buffalo ? or in America, the land of the bison ? "With the 

 single exception of the island-continent of Australia, (a place 

 there is no tittle of evidence to show that they visited,) wherever 

 the Maoris came from, they must have known cattle. From the 

 most eastern extremity of Asia, where the Chinese call the cow 

 ngau, (k = ng, kau = ngau; and I compared the English gnaw 

 with the Maori ngau, "to bite," the idea being "ruminant," 

 "cud-chewing,") right through all changes acknowledged by 

 philologists — kau, coo, go, gau, bos, fiovg, etc., — to the extreme 

 west, in Ireland, where the word is bo, the name stretches right 

 across Europe and Asia. If the Maoris came from either of 

 these two great continents, and knew cattle at all, it was pro- 

 bably by one of these two forms of the word "bo" (Tongan 60, 

 Maori 300) or " kau " that the animals were called. Thus I, who 

 believe that the Maori race had its cradle on the lofty plateaux 

 of Central Asia, cannot see anything ludicrous in the idea that 

 their language retains some trace of words which they must 

 have used, if they used any. 



The "naga" theory I shall not defend at any length, but I 

 decline to accept Mr. Atkinson's play upon nga as conclusive 

 in any way. The Maori, who knows not the snake in New 

 Zealand, uses for "snail, slug," etc., the word ngata, which in 

 Polynesia means the " snake," and is in Hawaiian naka. 

 Whether the Hawaiian form is nearest of kindred to the naga 

 serpent of Sanscrit, the naga, Malay, "a dragon," maca, Anglo- 



