190 VOCABULARY OF BOUGAINVILLE STEAITS. 



the familiar " Isonandra gutta " of this region.^ .... Some of the 

 names of trees in Bougainville Straits I have been unable to trace 

 further westward than New Guinea. Thus, the breadfruit-tree 

 (" Artocarpus incisa ") is the Balia of Bougainville Straits and the 

 Boli of the Maclay coast of New Guinea.^ 



The term Uri, which is applied in a slightly altered form to 

 different fruits in the Melanesian Islands, would seem to be derived 

 from the Indian Archipelago. Proceeding westward from the Banks 

 Group where Ur is the name of the fruit of " Spondias dulcis," we 

 find that in New Georgia in the Solomon Islands Ure is a designa- 

 tion for fruit. In the neighbouring islands of Bougainville Straits, 

 several species of " Ficus " and their fruits receive the name of Uri. 

 To the westward of the Solomon Islands we come upon the same 

 term in the Mafoor of New Guinea, where the breadfruit is known 

 as Ur. Lastly, in the island of Ceram in the Indian Archipelago, 

 the fruit of the banana is called Uri.^ 



On this unequivocal evidence of one of the sources of the lan- 

 guages of the islands of Bougainville Straits it is unnecessary to 

 dilate. It should, however, be remembered that other words are 

 distinctly Polynesian in their origin, and must be sought for in the 

 languages of the Pacific groups. Thus, whilst numa, the word for 

 " house," finds its counterpart in the Malay rumah and the Javanese 

 lima, fale-fale, which also signifies a house, is the vale of the New 

 Hebrides (Lepers Island and Aurora Island), the vale of Fiji, the 

 fale of Samoa and Tonga, and the wliare of the Maoii. According 

 to Dr. Codrington, these two words signifying a house, /a/e and ruma, 

 with their various forms, have an interesting distribution. Tiie 

 first belongs to the eastern Pacific, and the second to the western 

 Pacific ; but they overlap in the intermediate districts as in the 

 New Hebrides and the Solomon Islands. It is, however, significant 

 that both these words should be included in the language of Bou- 

 gainville Straits. 



I will conclude my remarks on this vocabulary with a reference 

 to the imitative character of the names of some of the animals. In 

 Bougainville Straits, the frog is known as appa-appa in imitation of 



^By an easy transition from gdlah through katari to kauri we liave the probable 

 origin of the native name of the resin-yielding " Dammara australis " (Kauri Pine) of New 

 Zealand. 



2 Miklouho-Maclay in Proc. Lin. Soc, N.S.W. Vol. X., p. 348. 



^ I am mainly indebted to Dr. Codrington 's "Melanesian Languages " for the distribution 

 tjf this term. 



