466 Transactions. 



history of these languages such phrases are only misleading. 

 For example, there is an Oceanic language spoken on the shores 

 of Bartle Bay, on the north-east coast of British New Guinea, 

 in three villages, Wedau, Wamira, and Divari ; of this language 

 a short dictionary has been published.* Any one examining its 

 vocabulary, after having learnt the language of Mota, in the 

 Banks Group, would recognise about 20 per cent, of words 

 common to the tw^o — such as ia, fish ; ama, father ; qari, owl ; 

 ivo, tooth ; ire, pandanus ; lagi, wind ; digo, staff ; haba, talk ; 

 mata, eye ; nogi, nest ; numa, house ; ruva, measure ; hara, 

 bent ; uma, drink ; uwa, bear fruit ; tano, earth ; natu, child. 

 The same number, perhaps, would be recognised by a person 

 who knew Maori — words such as haba, slab ; koti, cut ; humara, 

 sweet potato ; manu, bird (only in compounds) ; mutu, cape (?) ; 

 nima, hand ; tutu, nail ; tae, excrement ; taniga, ear (?) ; tarai, 

 cut down ; toi, drop or trickle ; waga, boat ; tuna, eel ; hebe, 

 butterfly ; muriai, afterwards. A person conversant with the 

 language of Florida would probably notice quite as many words 

 whose forms were alike — e.g., gigi, toe or finger ; tele, ridge or 

 path ; ai, tree or wood ; kokorereko, fowl ; buruburu, long grass. 

 Some of the above w^ords are common to all three — Mota, Maori, 

 and Florida. Are we, then, to speak of a Mota, or a Maori, or 

 a Florida element in Wedau ? Evidently this is impossible : the 

 words are from a common Oceanic stock. There are, of course, 

 some cases where we know that a word has been introduced from 

 one group into another, but otherwise it is only misleading to 

 speak of a Melanesian, or Malay, or Polynesian element in some 

 other kindred group — as misleading as it would be to say that 

 Wedau contained so-many words borrowed from Maori, so-many 

 from Mota, so-many from Florida, so-many from other islands, 

 with perhaps a real native element of 5 or 6 per cent, of true 

 Wedau words. 



Again, there is no doubt that a Melanesian differs very much 

 from a Polynesian or from a Malay in physical features. Whether 

 the Polynesians of the Eastern Pacific are a race resulting from 

 the mixture of a dark Melanesian people with traders from the 

 mainland— a race who spoke the language of their Melanesian 

 mothers rather than that of their foreign fathersf — or whether 

 the two races are distinct and one has imposed its language on 

 the other (if this be credible), is really not a question for the 

 student of languages. How it happens that people so different 

 in physical features speak languages which are branches from a 

 common stock he cannot tell. 



* By the Rev. Copland King, M.A., of the Anglican New Guinea 

 Mission. 



t Suggested by Dr. Codrington, " Melanesian Languages," page 3.3. 



