APPENDIX. 
525 
and are never executed by the present race of Indians. Even 
among the most uncivilized tribes^ where these figures are 
foundj they have no idea whatever of their origin; and if 
asked_, will say they do not know^ or that they suppose the 
spirits did them. Many of the Portuguese and Brazilian 
traders will insist upon it that they are natural productions^ 
or^ to use their own expression^ that God made them 
and on any objection being made they triumphantly ask^ 
^^And could not God make them?^^ which of course settles 
the point. Most of them in fact are quite unable to see any 
difference between these figures and the natural marks and 
veins that frequently occur in the rocks. 
REMARKS ON THE VOCABULARIES. 
BY B. G. LATHAM, M.D. 
The observation which is the most necessary to the general 
student^ as a preliminary to Mr. Wallace's tables^, is the nature 
of certain syllables which in the Uainambeu, Juri, Tariana^ 
and other lists, appear at the beginning of the names of the 
different parts of the human body. It is certainly not by 
accident that in one language they all begin with m-, in 
another with n - ; and so on. It is equally certain that these 
prefixes are no part of the original word. In the Baniwa of 
the Rio Isanna, the term for hand is ca][i% ; the syllable nu- is 
a wo?z-radical prefix. Now the non-radical prefix is (almost 
to a certainty) the possessive pronoun, so that nw-cabi = my 
head : the amalgamation of the two elements being common 
in the American, as well as in certain languages of the Old 
World. (Appendix to Macgillivray^s Woyage of the Rattle- 
snake^ — Languages of the Louisiade.) The distribution of 
these prefixed possessive pronouns is a better guide than the 
