THE SOUTHERN GATEWAY. 483 



276. 



This series of identifications runs very smoothly and calls for little com- 

 ment. In a group of the languages we encounter the preface k which has 

 been noted in 273. So far as comparison may be made this appears in the 

 same languages in the two items. 



278. 



The identifications are very simple and faithful to the uha stem. Sariba 

 exhibits the preface k as in 276. The Rubi form with the liquid is com- 

 parable with matching forms in the other gateway. 



282. 



These forms are simple until we reach Kiviri-Oiun bobu. This seems to 

 be a duplication of fou degraded either to fo or to/w, the former being intrin- 

 sically the more likely form, but we lack the data to make a determination. 



284. 



The course of the initial consonant in this area is to b, to v, to h, to w. 

 The liquid passes through i to extinction. This passage from consonant 

 to vowel has not been segregated in Melanesian phonology, but in New 

 Guinea it is found in five languages and in several items. 



285. 



The absence of complication in these identifications in the southern gate- 

 way affords me the opportunity to note here, as satisfactorily as anywhere, 

 my surprise that in this New Guinea material we find so marked an absence 

 of the final consonants of the closed stems. In the hypothesis we are to 

 regard these landings on the shore of Torres Straits as among the most 

 ancient way-ports of the migration of the Proto-Samoan swarm, yet in this 

 particular we find a predominance of the junior forms which in Polynesia 

 we are to regard as developed in general since the Melanesian transit. It 

 may well be that the New Guinea languages shared the tendency of objec- 

 tion to closed stems and had not yet advanced to the employment of 

 formative suffixes, which has been the chief agent in preserving once final 

 consonants in Nuclear Polynesian. In this case, having no means of pro- 

 tection for closing consonants, the process of final abrasion proceeded with 

 scant interruption to remove them. 



290. 



Here, as in remoter Polynesian migration, we find the trace (Murua vine) 

 of the earlier stem -fine. Another simple stem calls for comment, sina in 

 Mugula, sine in Suau, Sariba, Tubetube, Dobu. I incline to regard this as 

 fine under a first mutation (hine) to the aspiration of its own series ; then, 

 by the floating of h, swung into secondary mutation normal to the lingual 

 series. Thus we may establish the transition phase by which Sina has 

 become a woman's name in Polynesia and is thus removed from possibility 

 of association with the shining sina (342). 



In the general fafine stem this material gives us reason to suspect that 

 the former and the latter/ are not of the same potency or quality; for 

 that reason I note separately their mutation series for comparison. For 



