36 FUNAFUTI ATOLL. 



Cooper's* notes of " Nangiia " on San Bernardo and Palmerston 

 Islands. 



Besides the Fetau already described, there are two other 

 blossoms especially valued for their scent by the natives, the 

 Boua and the Jiali. In " the old times " flowers were worn 

 lavishly, and are interwoven with many native tales and customs. 

 A lover's wishes were granted by the lady of his choice, who 

 crowned him with a scented garland, but a refusal was conveyed 

 by handing to the less fortunate swain an unscented wreath. 

 The passion for scent among the Polynesians was illustrated by 

 the Hawaiian chiefs, who reserved the choicest scent trees for 

 themselves by tabuing them to the common people. 



The Boua (Guettarda speciosa, Linn.), grows abundantly as a 

 small tree twenty feet high, with large, ovate, opposite, rough 

 leaves, bearing in cymes a profusion of richly perfumed white 

 flowers, with long slender corolla tubes. The leaves are used for 

 poultices, and the flowers are employed both for scenting the 

 anointing coconut oil and are worn as wreaths, f 



The Jiali, determined by the kind help of Mr. R. T. Baker as 

 Gardenia taitensis, D.C., is not so common, I noticed it only at 

 Luamanif. It grows into a small tree, with glossy, opposite, 

 obovate leaves, and bears large, handsome, white, sweet smelling, 

 hypocrateriform flowers, which are used in the same way as the 

 Boua. " A singular enchantment was employed [in the Hervey 

 Group] to kill off the husband of a pretty woman desired by 

 someone else. The expanded flower of a Gardenia was stuck 

 upright a very difficult performance in a cup (i.e. half a large 

 coconut shell) of water. A "prayer" was then offered for the 

 husband's speedy death, the sorcerer earnestly watching the 

 flower. Should it fall the incantation was successful."! For 

 a married Mangaiian man to dream of Gardenia meant, if the 

 blossom were expanded, that he was about to become the father 

 of a boy, if unoxpanded, of a girl. The Gardenia blossom (the 

 flower of flowers in native estimation) was, and still is, worn in 

 the pierced ears of both sexes. In Tonga the same plant appar 

 ently had the same name and use, for a verse in an old song ran : 



* Cooper Coral Lands of the Pacific, ii., 1880, p. 76. " On Palmerston 

 Island Damana timber is very plentiful, and so is a wood called Nangiia, 

 generally found in the Pacific on desert shores, or on the brink of 

 lagoons where its roots are bathed by the tide. Its characteristics are 

 great weight, intense hardness, and closeness of grain. Mr, Sterndale 

 considers that it would be very valuable as a substitute for boxwood for 

 engravers. The logs were about 18 in. in diameter." 



fThe Vitians make necklaces (taube or salusalu) of the corollas of 

 this and other white odoriferous Monopetalae." Seemann loc. tit., p. 131. 



J Gill The South Pacific and New Guinea, Sydney, 1892, p. 22. 



Gill Proc. Austr. Assoc. Adv. Sci. for 1892 (1893), p. 613. 



