56 SISSANO. 
recognized until Dr. Seemann discovered it in Viti Levu.* It does not 
become a source of food until we pass through Melanesia almost to 
New Guinea. ‘The word, however, exists in Polynesia, as shown 
by the series here set forth, and it is applied to the arrowroot. This 
gives ground for the interpretation of the element pia as descriptive 
of some quality which is equally true of the arrowroot and of the pith 
of the sago palm. ‘The most distinctive common quality, which would 
appeal to the savage mind as a quality worthy to serve for descriptive 
designation, is that each exists in the form of a sticky paste and that 
each in the process of preparation gives off an abundant waste of 
feculence which in those warm lands speedily undergoes an offensive 
corruption. ‘That the sense of pia lies somewhere in these characters 
is inferable from the fact that in Maori it denotes the gum exuding 
from trees; in Tahiti the gum of the banana blossom, blood clot, and 
the lochia; in Moriori diarrhea; and in Tongan it expresses the sense 
of purulence. In the more-developed forms of the name of sago in 
Indonesia and the New Guinea region we shall do well to bear in mind 
that these are compactions of some general noun qualified by the 
character expressed by pia. ‘The Melanesian series has been so ordered 
as to show a course of devolution from a certain standard form regarded 
as a compaction in the beginning and then treated as an established 
unit. This series extends through the first 21 items with satisfactory 
continuity. The working stem here is ra-pia, in which the initial 
consonant follows common mutations through 1 and a semivowel to 
extinction in 19-21. In 6 and 7 we have the Viti form and in 18 a 
devolution form by final abrasion. If 9 leiba is not a printer’s error in 
Ray’s report, it is readily comprehensible as metathetic upon 8 leiba. 
In 10-11, 13-15, 17-18 we find the immediately succeeding type of 
rabia after final abrasion, and in 12 and 16 we find a pair of forms of 
this abraded type which have picked up a new final in the palatal ch. 
In 19-21 we find this abraded type still more reduced by the not 
infrequent frontal abrasion. In the group 22-30 we begin with the 
simple bia stem which extends in the series to 25 piapia, a duplication 
form which occurs in Tahiti and Futuna. In 29 and 30 we have a 
parallel of rapia in which via-vie, a simple variant of pia, is applied in 
the descriptive position to a stem nga-ngo; it does not seem likely that 
nga can be associated with ra, though there do exist instances of the 
r-ng mutation. In 26-29 we have a group in which an unmistakable 
pia derivative is defined by the addition of three several stages of a 
stem as to whose signification we have no clue. Friederici cites Ray 
as suggesting metathesis as operative in the case of 34-35. It may 
be applicable to the whole series 31-36. ‘Taking a start in 31 bariam 
and comparing the assumption of final m with the syllable assumed in 
2 rapiana, we can readily see how mechanically baria is metathetic 
*Seemann ‘‘A Mission to Viti,’’ 291. 
