324 A NATURALIST IN THE PACIFIC chap. 



lowering of temperature it would descend to the plains, it follows 

 that in the mountains of an oceanic island it might be driven into 

 the sea or await extinction on a mountain-top. In the tropics also 

 there would be no escape during a gradual increase of temperature. 

 Here again it would make its last stand on the strand, and, forced 

 to choose between Death and Adaptation, the genus might select 

 the latter alternative and present us with a startling new form. In 

 this sense Freycinetia seems to offer itself as " fair game " for the 

 speculative botanist, and at all events he will be able to interro- 

 gate it as to the connection between its existing range of altitude 

 and the climatic conditions of the earlier phases of its history. 



The Freycinetias bear the same name over Polynesia, " ie-ie " 

 in Hawaii, " ie " and " ie-ie " in Tahiti and Samoa, which appear 

 in their full form in the Rarotongan and Maori " kie-kie." The 

 secret of the wide distribution of the name lies in the circumstance 

 that this is a mat-word over much of Polynesia, as in Fiji, Tonga, 

 Samoa, the Gilbert group, Tahiti, &c., Freycinetia leaves being 

 often employed for making mats, as in Samoa and New Zealand. 

 The same word is applied in some groups to small species of 

 Pandanus that were also used in mat-making. Thus in Fiji 

 " kie-kie "was not onlythe name for a mat-dress, but also of Pandanus 

 caricosus that supplied the material. In the home of the Poly- 

 nesians in Malaya and its vicinity the same word for mat and 

 Pandanus occur. Thus, " gerekere " in the Motu dialect of New 

 Guinea and " keker " or " kekel " in Amboyna are the names of 

 small species of Pandanus employed in mat-manufacture ; whilst 

 " kihu " and " kiel " in Celebes are the words for the mats them- 

 selves. Therefore in one form or another the word, originally 

 applied to the mats, but now often restricted to the plants from 

 which the materials were derived, ranges over the great region 

 extending from Malaya to New Zealand, Tahiti, and Hawaii, and, 

 as I have shown in the table given in my paper on Polynesian 

 Plant-Names {Journ. Victor. Inst., London, 1896), it may be traced 

 even to Further India, as in Annam, and to North-East Australia. 

 It thus covers the area to which the migrations of the Polynesians 

 of the Paciiic have been confined, and it covers also the area of the 

 genus Freycinetia. There is something far more than mere analogy 

 between man and plants in their occupation of the Pacific islands. 

 The plants are Malayan and the Polynesians are from Malaya also, 

 whilst in both man and plants we experience the same difficulty in 

 explaining their dispersal over the ocean. Divesting his mind of 

 all previous conceptions, the ethnologist might profitably study 



