296 THE POLYNESIAN WANDERINGS. 



There is a uniformity about these Tongafiti words which indicates a 

 reason acting upon them all which was not in action upon the Proto- 

 Samoan swarm, and we see that the change is progressive in the Tongafiti. 

 As I feel it this reason is that by the time the Tongafiti were ready to leave 

 Indonesia they had lost all recollection of kapakau as the flapping member, 

 and being a mere vocable used uncomprehendingly as a label for a natural 

 object it was subject to the humors of speakers in making changes. Thus 

 we may comprehend the changes in Indonesia. Malay, Magindano and 

 Malagasy alone retain the first syllable. All the others received the word 

 when that syllable was gone, received it at the same time probably, received 

 it certainly from the Tongafiti after they had reduced the word. The 

 Magindano papak wing and Baliyon papak bird smack more than a little 

 of Rotuma papau. 



Next, when we turn to Melanesia, we find forms variant only of the kapa 

 stem. Mota, Marina, Arag, Pak, Sasar, Alo Teqel, Savo, and Fagani all 

 retain the initial palatal. It is only in the Solomons that we find this 

 vanishing, and the mere dropping of the k is yet a long way from the 

 dropping of the first syllable entirely. 



The Arabic has more than we can digest for our plain kapa, and even 

 were we to admit the propriety of Dr. Macdonald's method of obtaining 

 pleasing results by dropping out inconvenient elements the consonants of 

 the Arabic stem, hfk, which might be identifiable with kp, appear in the 

 inverse order. 



251- 

 kusue, kusuiie, rat, mouse. 



The following words all signify rat : 



Samoa: 'isumu. Nuguria: kisumu. 



Sesake: kusuwe. Mota: gasuwc. Vaturanga: ngasuve. Fagani: 

 gasufe. Wango: gasuhe. Lo: gahuwa. Merlav: gasuw. 

 Sasar, Vuras, Alo Teqel, Norbarbar : gosow. Pak : gosog. Gog : 

 gosug. Tanna : yasuk. Mosin : gusuw. Motla v, Volow : gohow. 

 Lakon: wohow. Alite: nguaua. Ulawa, Saa, Bululaha: 

 asuhe. Malekula Pangkumu : asua. Nggao : kusi. Nggela, 

 Bugotu : kuhi. Savo: kuzi. Malekula: khasup, akasu. 



Malay, Java, Baju: tikus. Massaratty: tikuti. Gah: karufei. 



Arabic: kutrub' . 



This is a peculiarly interesting word, for, if Polynesian, it seems to be a 

 form that in the travel from Indonesia was widely disseminated by the way 

 and yet not carried the whole distance. 



The Samoan 'isumu differs in one element from kusuwe, and nowhere in 

 the many forms in Melanesia do we find a trace of this m. Yet the two 

 earlier syllables in Samoan 'isumu and Nuguria kisumu strongly indicate a 

 connection with the Melanesian in the backward past. Samoa has three 

 rat names. It has this 'isumu; it retains, but little uses, the Tongafiti 

 'iole; it employs most frequently the word 'imoa, which is identifiable only 

 in Nukunau. 



Codrington (Melanesian Languages 87, note) says that "the old black Fiji 

 rat is ngatho," a clear equivalent of kusuwe. This is not in Hazlewood's 



