532 Trausaclious. — Miscellaneous. 



it to be explored by the European linguist without much prepa- 

 ration and investigation. The only documents available pre- 

 sented to the philologist a broken and imperfect collection of 

 vocabularies from the different groups of islands, in which even 

 the mode of expressing the same sound varied. The European 

 scholar, accustomed to the elaborate system of inflection and of 

 general grammatical expression into which the oriental and 

 classical forms of speech have crystallized themselves, needed a 

 long and special preparation before he could grasp the mode or 

 comprehend the genius of apparently simple tongues wherein 

 shifting particles, arranging themselves about comparatively 

 changeless major forms, were found to be capable of rendering 

 very subtle and powerful modes of expression. Years of study 

 would not enable the European to acquire the same insight 

 into the delicacies of the Polynesian language that w^ould be 

 revealed to one resident among the people, and having a con- 

 sequent acquaintance with the spirit of the spoken tongue. 

 Added to this was the difticulty superinduced by the great 

 dialectic differences : people inhabiting groups of islands 

 scattered about the Pacific Ocean, thousands of miles apart in 

 some cases, and holding little communication with each other, 

 had in process of time developed speech quite unintelligible 

 one to the other. Although the main w^ords of each dialect 

 are undoubtedly the same, and the system of grammatical 

 construction very similar, still the loss of various letters and 

 the substitution of others have created a confusion so great 

 that the language of the Samoan or the Tongan is to the 

 Maori the speech of a stranger and a barbarian. It remained 

 for some Polynesian scholar to arrange and put into a form 

 easy to manipulate, and to be comprehended at a glance, the 

 various related words used in the different island-groups. The 

 adventure may seem to be a bold one, and the power to achieve 

 may have fallen short of the conception : still, I have, in my 

 " Maori-Polynesian Comparative Dictionary," to offer as the re- 

 sult of years of untiring industry an original work to the Maori 

 scholar a,nd the European philologist. I trust that it may be 

 merely the commencement of more full investigation into the 

 comparison of the Oceanic languages, and I shall hail with 

 delight more full research and new discovery in these almost 

 unknown fields through which I have passed with the half-hesi- 

 tation of an explorer. 



Not a small part of my labour has been the correspondence 

 required for the acquisition of necessary documents from 

 friends (many of them personally unknown) at long distances 

 from New ZeaJand ; some of them dwelling in localities where 

 communication with the outer world is both difQcult and in- 

 frequent. I have received vocabularies, grammars, legends, 

 songs, genealogies, etc., from all parts of the Pacific; and the 



