170 THE SUBANU. 
possibility of the use of the infix in the word timae, but this is unique 
and therefore doubtful. The more closely we study the Malayan use of 
the Polynesian content, by so much the more do we convince ourselves 
that it is essentially a foreign element—adopted, but very scantily 
adapted. I can find but one instance in which Malayan infixature has 
been applied to a Polynesian loan, filz item 20. 
Since the mutation is found most irregular in the treatment of the 
vowels, which in Polynesian are the elements which carry the meaning 
despite consonant variety, I may cite an instance in our own English 
which will illustrate this point. In France the contre-danse may be 
applied with reason to so formal a dance as the stately minuet. A 
polished court brought contre-danse into England in order to add dig- 
nity to its festivities and to have possession of a name which should 
prevent the dances of Whitehall from confusion with the Morris dancers 
on the green before the wayside tavern. After adoption followed adap- 
tation; through an inexorable rule of English phonetics the alien contre- 
danse underwent vowel mutation and became country-dance. In its 
new form it was misunderstood and applied to the very dances which 
it was designed to place in a more humble state. Now it is very freely 
employed of the folk dances lately restored somewhat artificially to use. 
Last stage of all, the true meaning of contra having quite vanished, it has 
become barn dance. From a Louis Treize treading the gavotte whose 
lilt is yet not wholly forgotten, the word has passed to Hodge heeling 
and toeing the dust from a puncheon floor between the racks of hay. 
Where we see the Malayans preserving the Polynesian content as 
a foreign acquisition we see on the other hand the Polynesians quite 
uncontaminated by any Malayan influence, the only possible exception 
being timae, which I present more as a result of curious research than 
with conviction. 
The purpose of this chapter—indeed, so far as I am concerned, the 
end and object of this whole book—is to pass under critical review the 
validity of the so-called Malayo-Polynesian family of speech. We now 
have come through much minute investigation to the point at which we 
may deal with this problem. 
We shall find assistance in arithmetic. In former books in which 
I have dealt with this subject I was content to accept the list of words 
common to Malayan and Polynesian compiled by predecessors in this 
inquiry and copied by one from another. Thus I was led into the state- 
ment that the mass of material satisfactorily thus established amounted 
to somewhere about twelve dozen stems. Now I have made a fresh 
computation for myself upon one Malayan base and am prepared to 
amend the former figures. In Subanu-Visayan the amount of the Poly- 
nesian content is 110 stems. This is a figure upon which I am willing 
to stand as the result of careful study. It represents the extent to which 
some Polynesian has community|with one Malayan, namely the Subanu- 
Visayan. 
