THE LINE OF MIGRATION. 101 



In the course of my researches I came upon a circumstance 

 which appears to point in an unmistakeable manner to the Indian 

 Archipelago as being the highway by which the Eastern Poly- 

 nesians have reached the Pacific. Tlie circumstance, to which I 

 refer, is that it is possible to trace the native names of some of the 

 common littoral trees, such as the Po.ndanus, BarriiKjtonia speciosa, 

 &c., from the Indian Archipelago across the central Pacific to the 

 Austral and Society Islands. In illustration, I will take Barring- 

 tonia speciosa, referring the I'eader, however, for the other trees to 

 yiagelSG. of this work. In the Indian Archipelago, I find the native 

 names of this tree to be Hoeiva hoetgn and Poetoen} In the islands 

 of Bougainville Straits in the Solomon Group, it is known as Fuputu. 

 In Fiji, it is known as Vutu f in the Tongan Group, as Futu f and 

 in the Hervey and Society Islands as E-Hoodu^ or Utu.^ It is 

 interesting to notice the modifications which the name of this tree 

 undergoes, as one follows it eastward from the Indian Archipelago 

 to the centre of the Pacific Ocean, a distance of between 4,000 and 

 5,000 miles; and it is equally instructive to reflect that without the 

 intermediate chano;es. intermediate it should be added in a sfeoofra- 

 phical as well as in an etymological sense, the names at the end of 

 the series would scarcely seem to be related. The Indian Archi- 

 jielago would appear to be the home of this littoral tree, which on 

 account of ih > buoyancy of its fruits has not only been spread over 

 Polynesia, but has reached Ceylon and Madagascar.^ From its 

 home in the Indian Archipelago, it has therefore extended to the 

 eastward as far as the central Pacific, and to the westward nearly 

 across the Indian Ocean. . . . It is obvious that much informa- 

 tion of this kind mifjht be collected which would be of considerable 

 value to philologists ; and even in the case of this single tree I 

 have only, so to speak, broken the ground. The tedious character 

 of the research necessary to collect the scanty information I have 

 obtained on this subject, will be amply compensated for, if my 

 remarks should prove suggestive to residents in the different 

 islands of the Indian and Pacific Oceans. 



^ " De Inlandsche Plantennamen," by G. J. Filet [vide reference on pagelSJ). 



2 " Year in Fiji," by J. Home : p. 70. (1881.) 



3 •' Ten years in South-Central Polynesia," by the Rev. T. "West : p. 146. (18G5.) 



< " Obervations made during a Voyage round the World," by J. R. Forster. (1778.) 

 6 " Jottings from the Pacific," by Wyatt Gill : p. 198. (1885.) 



^ " Report on the Botany of the Challenger," by "W. Botting Hemsley : vol. I., part iii., 

 p. 152. 



