538 Transactions. — Miscellaneous. 



KAO, dried kumara (sweet potatoes). Hawaiian, ao, dried 

 tare, used as food. Tongan, kakao, to bore or thrust with the 

 finger. Mangarevan, aka-kaokao, to take food out of a hole 

 on one side without touching the otlier. Tliese meanings 

 seem unconnected ; but the Maori kao was made by scraping 

 with the fingers or a stick among tlie young kumara tubers 

 and taking tliem away to be dried into kao, while the plant 

 was earthed up again, and the other tubers left to come to 

 maturity. 



MAHAEA, to tliinh of frequently ; to meditate upon. These 

 meanings are supported by Tahitian mahaea, to recollect, and 

 Rarotongan maaka, to consider, but give us no clue to the 

 composition of the word. In Hawaiian we find mauhala, to 

 keep up a grudge against aiiy one ; to remember his offence ; 

 envy, revenge, malice : hoo-mauhala, to lay up or remember 

 the offences of any one. In the Hawaiian, mau means to en- 

 dure, to continue, to repeat often and frequently ; with hala, 

 a sin, a trespass, an offence : and Maori hara is a sin, an error, 

 with MAU, to lay hold, to be steadfast (strengthened by Maori 

 mauahaea, to cherish ill-feeling). Thus it is probable that 

 MAHAEA originally meant not simply to thinh of frequently, 

 but to keep in remembrance another's fault, to bear a grudge. 



HUEUHURU, coarse hair, bristles, feathers. This word 

 is of very wide distribution, and in its meanings of coarse 

 hair, wool, feathers, &c., is known in almost every part of the 

 Polynesian, Melanesian, and Malay Islands. Samoan, fulu ; 

 Tahitian, hueu ; Hawaiian, hulu ; Tongan, fulufulu ; Earo- 

 tongan, ueu ; Marquesan, nuu; Futuna, fulu; Fijian, vulu; 

 Malay, bulu ; Javan, wulu ; &c. I do not propose to bring 

 to your notice any particular form of this word, but to call 

 your attention to a singular instance of letter-change in a 

 word of which hueu forms a jmrt, and where likeness has 

 been w^ell concealed under outward unlikeness. This is the 

 comparison of the Malagasy word voeondolo, a7i oiol, with 

 the Maori eueu, an owl. The people of Madagascar, inhabit- 

 ing an island near the African coast, have in their la.nguage 

 strong afiinities, not with the Africans, but with the Malays. 

 Many ingenious theories have been started to account for this 

 community of language (or portions of language) between 

 races separated by so vast an extent of ocean, but with these 

 theories we have at present little to do. It is enough to say 

 that there are such word-likenesses between the Malay and 

 Malagasy people. The Malagasy voeondolo may be dissected 

 thus: ^/ YORo, a bird ; voeona, the generic name for bird; 

 VOEOMAHAILALA, a^;j^eo«; voEOMBOLA, a jjcacoc^; &c.. The'?' 

 stands for Maori h, as voa, fruit, for Maori hua, fruit ; voki- 

 VOEY, round, for huei, to turn round. It will be noticed in 

 above examples that (as Malagasy has no w) o stands for 



