RACES BIBLIOGRAPHY COMMITTEE. 295 
destiny and abode—its presence and influence among the living— 
the entrance and road to the spirit world; beliefs as to the 
deceased great men of the tribe or race ? 
Myruo.tocy.—Beliefs as to a creator or creators—assistants in the work 
of creation, in administration, in communicating with men—as to 
inferior deities and their province and attributes ?—are these 
supposed to be heroes or (family) ancestors deified >—do they help 
or injure men ? 
PuitoLoey.—A list of the numerals and pronouns in the language, with 
suggestions as to their etymology? Paradigm of the conjugation 
and declension of the verb “to go,” and of the verb “to kill,” 
with a pronominal object? A few simple sentences to show the 
erammatical structure of the language ? A list of words for the 
English—man, woman, head, hair of head, eye, nose, tongue, ear, 
hand, thumb, foot, bone, blood, fire, water, sun, moon, father, 
mother, son, daughter, brother, sister, cousin, uncle, aunt; and 
the verbs give, take, make or do, bear, burn, see, hear. 
Our committee wishes to present to the next meeting of this Associa- 
tion a comparative view of the Australasian, Papuan, and Polynesian 
races, to be written in sections and on the same lines (as above) by those. 
who are well acquainted with these races, and are thus able to give 
reliable information regarding them. 
Reports on these lines may yet be obtained in sections for 
Australia, Tasmania, New Zealand, the New Hebrides, New 
Guinea, Fiji, and the chief groups in Polynesia. These reports 
would, doubtless, show considerable uniformity in the usages of 
the races, but the divergences would also be considerable, and 
especially interesting to a mind accustomed to observing these 
usages, and to ask what was their origin and how they came to 
vary. Of course such a task is a large one, and can be managed 
only by instalments. We now present two of these instalments, 
the one written by the Rev. W. Wyatt Gill, B.A., LL.D., and 
the other by that indefatigable pioneer missionary, the Rev. 
James Chalmers, of Port Moresby, New Guinea. Dr. Gill’s 
report applies to Polynesia, and especially to the Hervey Islands, 
where he so long laboured. 
The bibliography of the races has been compiled from two books 
already published, the ‘Catalogue of the York Gate Library,” 
formed by Mr. G. Wm. Silver, and the “Catalogue of the Sir 
George Grey Collection,” in the Free Public Library at Auckland, 
of which the latter has been forwarded to us for this purpose 
through the courtesy of Sir George Grey himself. Our committee 
has entered in these lists only such books as throw light on the 
ethnography of the races or the philology of their languages ; 
concise notices of some of the chief publications in the native 
languages will be found under each head. These lists do not 
pretend to be complete, and therefore may require to be supple- 
mented at some future time, when also other portions of our 
report on the races themselves may appear, if the Science 
Association should wish our labours to be continued. 
