68 REPORT—1843. 
and the eyes a fine black. ‘Their language is at present scarcely known to philolo- 
gists. It is spoken by about 60,000, and is a dialect of the wide-spread Polynesian. 
One of its marked peculiarities is, its reciprocal conjugation of the verb. Mr. Heath 
had entered very fully into a comparison of the Samoan with the Malay, and of 
several of the Polynesian languages among themselves, and of some of the Papuan 
dialects, and had obtained extensive vocabularies. With regard to individual and 
family life, the child is named after the god whose name is last invoked prior to the 
moment of birth. The mothers slightly press the forehead so as to give it a conical 
form : they rear their children tenderly. Circumcision is practised. They believed 
in a future state, but had rather loose and inconsistent notions as to what sort of 
state it is; some, they said, became gods, some were eaten by the gods, and the chiefs 
became living pillars in a large temple. The tradition with them is, that they came 
from the westward, and their elysium is Pulotu. Since Pulo is the name for island, 
this also indicates their origin. ‘They are an intelligent people, and manifestly capable 
ofimprovement. The people of Tanna and the neighbouring island are in stature 
about five feet six or five feet eight, the legs rather short and ill-formed: they are 
neither so well-formed or well-featured as the Samoans and other Polynesians. The 
complexion is the colour of dirty or worn copper coin, and they make their skin still 
darker by a deep purple-dye; they also daub their faces with red, black, and other 
pigments. There is a mixture of the Papuans and Polynesians, for the people of 
Erranan and Immer have dialects very similar to the Samoan, and there are inter- 
marriages between the tribes, so that the Polynesians are now nearly as dark-coloured 
as the Papuan. Various dialects were found, not only in the group, but even on one 
and the’same island. The language spoken at Port Resolution is in some respects 
peculiar ; it has a conjugation of the verb by prefixes, and not only a dual but a triple 
personal pronoun. The people of Tanna sometimes bury their dead in shallow graves, 
sometimes tie a stone to them and sink them in the sea. At Anatom, the widow is 
tied, alive, to the dead body of her husband, and sunk together with it in the sea. 

Dr. Harvey furnished a catalogue of the Vertebrata of the county of Cork as com- 
pared with those of Ireland generally, and Great Britain; by which it would appear, 
that of 630 vertebrated animals, natives of the British Isles, there are 445 found in 
Ireland, and of these 285 in the county of Cork. There are of— 
British. Irish. Cork. 
Mammalia  ..........c.eeeeee weGdee tisetices ate. VOF 28 23 
Aves ...... Stecee eects. Glesteees Pe Eee st be as 312 253 161 
Reptilia...... eeeene POeeeTEPEROOE Eee 15 4 2 
Picces) Ui.i-.ceeccs Spei Laee eS ees moueteee . 236 157 99 
Turdus Whitei, Sciena aquila, and Naucrates ductor, included in this catalogue, had 
not been observed before in Ireland. Glareola pratincola is noticed as having once 
been shot in the county of Cork, but the specimen was not preserved. 
On Certain Peculiarities in the Arteries of the Six-banded Armadillo. 
By Dr. Atiman. 
The peculiarities noticed in this communication consist in a remarkable arrange- 
ment of vessels, analogous to what has been already observed in the Sloths, in the 
two-toed Anteater and in the Lorises, and is characterized by the arteries having a 
tendency to divide rather than ramify ; from which it results, that instead of a diffusely 
branched arterial distribution, the larger branches suddenly break themselves up into 
a. number of small vessels, which anastomosing but sparingly, give rise to a series 
of vascular pencils, from which the ultimate supply of blood to the organs is derived. 
This remarkable arrangement is chiefly displayed in the arteries of the posterior ex- 
tremities, in the caudal arteries, and in the epigastric. 
Mr. Thompson exhibited specimens of the Alpine Hare (Lepus variabilis), from the 
Highlands of Scotland, and of the Hare of Ireland (Lepus hibernicus), for the purpose 
of showing that the species are identical. Of this fact he, judging from external 
characters, satisfied himself last autumn, when in the Highlands of Scotland, and sub- 
sequently proved it by a comparison of the anatomical characters of the two supposed 
species, 
