October 15, 1886. J 



SCIENCE. 



355 



we do not know — is to be severely censured for 

 allowing a book so full of facts and statistics to 

 appear without any index whatsoever. It lessens 

 its value one-half. N. M. B. 



FOBNANDER'S POLYNESIAN RACE. 



The third volume, recently published, completes 

 this remarkable work, which has a decided and 

 peculiar value, in a scientific sense. This value, 

 however, is not that for which the author himself 

 is most disposed to claim credit. The ethnological 

 and linguistic speculations which occupy his third 

 volume, and on \fhich he has evidently bestowed 

 much labor, will not commend themselves to the 

 judgment of students familiar with such inquiries. 

 But the portions of his work devoted to the his- 

 tory, traditions, and ancient usages of the Hawaiian 

 people, have great interest. The many legendary 

 chants which the author has preserved possess no 

 mean poetical merits. Bat their chief value is 

 historical ; and the conclusions to which they lead 

 have an importance extending far beyond the. 

 limits of the field to which the legends relate. 

 One of the most notable results of Mr. Fornander's 

 work, and the one for which it will be perhaps 

 most cited hereafter, is the clear proof which it 

 affords that traditions going back for several cen- 

 turies may, under certain conditions, be accepted 

 as authentic history. No one who reads these 

 volumes can have any doubt that the Hawaiian 

 annalists are able to give an account of events 

 which have occurred in their islands during a 

 period of at least nine hundred years, and to re- 

 late these events with sufficient fulness and 

 accuracy to enable the compiler to make out of 

 them a fair chronological narrative. The genealo- 

 gies go back some centuries further, but with 

 fewer details and greater uncertainty. The 

 authentic history must be restricted to less than a 

 thousand years ; but even within this limit it 

 upsets completely some assumptions which have 

 been confidently maintained by writers of con- 

 siderable eminence. The notion that no unwritten 

 tradition which goes back more than a century can 

 be trusted is shown to be wholly unwarranted. 

 Those who have maintained it have failed to dis- 

 cern the distinctions which make such traditions 

 trustworthy or the reverse. Much, as we now 

 see, depends upon race. There are races and 

 tribes in whom the historical instinct is strong, as 

 we find it in the Chinese and the Arabians. There 

 are others, like the Hindoos, in whom it seems 



An account of the Polynesian race : its origin and mi- 

 grations ; and the ancient history of the Hawaiian people 

 to the times of Kamehameha I. 3 vols. By Abraham For- 

 NANDER. London, Triibner, 1878-86. 8°. 



almost entirely lacking. The test of its presence 

 appears to be the disposition to preserve genealo- 

 gies. As among the Arabian tribes, so in all the 

 Polynesian groups, the pedigrees of noted chiefs 

 and of reigning lines are preserved with great care. 

 They are usually thrown into the form of metrical 

 chants, wliich are easily retained in the memory. 

 The three names of each generation — father, 

 mother, and child — make a verse of the chant. 

 The child whose name concludes one verse is the 

 father (or mother) in the next. In this manner a 

 series of catch-words is maintained throughout, 

 making it impossible to derange the order of the 

 pedigi'ee, and easy to keep the chant in memory. 

 Thus, for example, the later descents of the British 

 royal family, recorded in the Hawaiian fashion, 

 would run as follows : — 



George the Third the father, Charlotte the mother, Edward 



of Kent the child ; 

 Edward of Kent the father, Victoria the mother, Victoria 



the child ; 

 Victoria the mother, Albert the father, Albert Edward the 



child ; 



and so on. It is evident that any one who could 

 learn by heart a hundred lines of verse would 

 easily learn and remember a hundred generations 

 in this singsong. Compared witli the Homeric 

 catalogue of ships, it would be a trivial efliort of 

 memory ; and, where such a chant was known to 

 many persons, any mistake of one reciter would 

 be promptly corrected by others. 



Every island and every large district of the 

 Hawaiian group had the pedigree of its ruling 

 family carefully retained and often repeated by 

 tlie priests and other dependents of the family, as 

 well as by the chiefs themselves. As intermar- 

 riages were frequent, these genealogies confirm 

 one another, in a manner which leaves no doubt 

 of their correctness. The more important chiefs 

 of each line have special traditions attached to 

 their names, and recorded frequently, though not 

 invariably, in metrical form. Sir George Grey 

 and other inquirers in New Zealand, and the mis- 

 sionaries in almost every important island of 

 Polynesia, have found similar customs prevailing, 

 and have been able to trace back the histories of 

 the various islands with unquestionable exactness 

 for periods varying from two hundred to a thou- 

 sand years. The data supplied by Mr. Fornander 

 far exceed in number and value those collected by 

 any other investigator. Tlieir abundance, and 

 the exactness insured by the compiler's habit of 

 ju-licial scrutiny, make his work the higliest 

 authority on this subject, and indispensable to any 

 historical writer who desires to satisfy himself or 

 his readers in regard to the credibility of unwritten 

 traditions, when preserved under certain favor- 

 able circumstances. 



