142 SISSANO. 
Admiralty Group; it is likely that in the islands of the Polynesian 
Verge, where in the chart a space is left blank, there is another sur- 
vival. Sirih-chewing has its strong central body in Indonesia, it has 
in Melanesia an active and conquering advance guard; kava-drinking 
has its strength in Polynesia; in Melanesia it has nothing but a rear 
guard of weakness; and wherever the two come into combat it is the 
sirih which overwhelms. We regard the Indonesians as prime carriers 
of the sirih culture; at least we may say confidently that in every 
most distant region reached by Indonesians sirih-chewing is estab- 
lished. We do not regard the Indonesians as necessary for the portage 
of Indonesian custom to the extreme limit of the sirih area, there can 
be no trace of Indonesian origin in the sirih of Tikopia. But habits 
have a way of spreading, bad habits particularly. We know of no 
great voyages of Malayan peoples east of New Guinea, but we do 
know of many small voyages of social interchange, mostly war, 
between minor settlements of folk along the track from New Guinea 
eastward; such things are constantly taking place. We can readily 
conceive of a western hamlet which has received the sirih from Indo- 
nesians at first hand communicating it to the next eastern hamlet as 
a new thing, a satisfactory thing; therefore on the one score attractive 
to experiment with and on the other score valuable to hold. It com- 
municates to the next, and still along new territory, always increasing 
the area in regions far ahead of the possibility of direct transmission 
from its source. I have seen exactly that method of translation in 
the case of Solomon Islanders and have witnessed the extension of 
the area. Dr. Rivers has recorded a similar case in Tikopia. 
The spread of kava is in different plight. In its eastern extension 
it has been wholly in the possession of Polynesian people; therefore 
we are under no necessity of differentiating the Polynesians and the 
more extended group to which Dr. Rivers has assigned the designation 
kava people. The kava people from Samoa to Hawaii and Tahiti 
are Polynesians and nothing else. ‘Through those regions of southern 
Melanesia, the New Hebrides complex, where we find kava we find 
such considerable linguistic traces as to warrant us in the conclusion 
that Polynesian migration has been commorant in those islands for 
periods of uncertain yet of considerable duration. With this lin- 
guistic picture clearly before our view we are under no need of looking 
for other than Polynesian carriers of the custom, if indeed it were not 
also a possession of such prior Melanesian population as that which 
Dr. Rivers denominates the dual people. In the northern region of 
Melanesia, principally the Solomon Islands, where our linguistic 
trace is even more strongly drawn, yet where the kava custom is all 
but absent, we have in Dr. Rivers’s narrative a brilliant and cogent 
explanation of the vanishing of what may have been the older custom 
before the newer and more stimulating, therefore more satisfactory, 
habit; and in this same region we find the actual stage of transition. 
