70 
POLYNESIAN RESEARCHES. 
head of a man, the chesnut from his kidneys, the 
yams from his legs,—and other vegetable produc¬ 
tions from different parts of his body. The im¬ 
portance of the bread-fruit and cocoa-nut, in the 
estimation of the natives, may also be gathered 
from the fact of their fabulous traditions assigning 
their origin to the head and the heart of him whose 
affection for his son was stronger than his love of 
life. 
There are no serpents in the islands, and the 
only venomous reptiles are a species of centipede, 
and a small kind of scorpion. The natives are 
seldom stung by them; and though the bite of 
the latter is painful, it is not attended with danger 
or serious inconvenience. There are no beasts of 
prey, nor wild animals, with the exception of a few 
boars or hogs, and dogs, in the mountains, and 
these are not often troublesome. 
With the exception of the fish on the coasts, the 
variety and abundance in the animal is much infe¬ 
rior to that in the vegetable productions of the South 
Sea Islands. Hogs, dogs, rats, and lizards were 
the only quadrupeds originally found among them. 
Hogs, called by the natives jpuaa > or buaa, and which 
they say w T ere brought by the first inhabitants, 
were found in the island by Wallis and Cook. 
These, however, differed considerably from the 
present breed, which is a mixture of English and 
Spanish. They are described as having been 
smaller than the generality of hogs now are, with 
long legs, long noses, curly or almost woolly hair, 
and short erect ears. An animal of this kind is 
now and then seen, and the people say such were 
the only hogs formerly in Tahiti. It was also said, 
that they, unlike all other swine, were wholly 
averse to the mire ; and a phenomenon so novel 
