xxii INTR OD UCT1ON. 



Aniwa, Mel, and Fil (the two latter places belonging to the 

 island of Efate, in the New Hebrides), there are colonies of 

 brown Polynesians who speak dialects of the Sawaiori 

 language. 



In regard to the Tarapon or Micronesian languages AVC know 

 but very little. Mr. Hale published a brief vocabulary of the 

 dialect spoken in Tobi, or Lord North's Island, as also another 

 of the language of Milk, an island in the Radack chain of the 

 Marshall Archipelago. 



Of the language of Ponape, one of the Caroline Islands, wo 

 know more than of any other dialect of the Tarapon tongue. 

 In 1858 the Rev. L. H. Gulick, M.D., published a small 

 grammar of the Ponape language. In 1872 a revised edition 

 of this, together with a Ponape-English and English-Ponape 

 vocabulary, was published in the 'Journal of the American 

 Oriental Society' (vol. x.), and gives us a fair knowledge of 

 this language. 



In 1860 the Rev. E. T. Doane, a missionary residing on 

 Ebon, or Strong's Island, one of the Marshall Group, published 

 in The Friend, at Honolulu, a brief sketch of the Ebon language. 



It should be added that papers on some of the languages of 

 Micronesia (or Tarapon region) have been published in the 

 Journal du Miistum Godeffroy, at Hamburg. Number I. of 

 that serial for 1873 contains a brief German and Ebon voca- 

 bulary by J. Kubary, and Number II. of the same year con- 

 tains a comparative vocabulary of German, Ebon, and Yap (of 

 the Caroline Islands). 



The languages of the Papuan, or Melanesian, or Negrito- 

 E'olynesian peoples we know more about. The work first in 

 importance on these languages is Die MelaneiscJten Sprachen 

 nach ihren Grammatisclien Ban und Polyneischen Sprachen ran 

 K C. von der Gabelentz (Part I., Leipzig, 1860; Part II, 

 Leipzig, 1873). In the two parts of this work most of the 

 material available for studying the Melanesian or Papuan lan- 

 guages has been worked up. Part I. contains the Ban of Fiji, 

 the Annatom (or more correctly Aneityum], Erromangft, Tana. 



