for a fact in nature--namely,
for the existence of certain plants, and for their place in ritual.' {16}

The reader has before him Mr. Max Muller's view. The white kernel of the
cocoanut was locally styled 'the brains of Tuna.' That name required
explanation. Hence the story about the fate of Tuna. Cocoanut was used
in Mangaia in the sense of 'head' (testa). So it is now in England.

See Bell's Life, passim, as 'The Chicken got home on the cocoanut.'



The Explanation


On the whole, either cocoanut kernels were called 'brains of Tuna'
because 'cocoanut'='head,' and a head has brains--and, well, somehow I
fail to see why brains of Tuna in particular! Or, there being a story to
the effect that the first cocoanut grew out of the head of the
metamorphosed Tuna, the kernel was called his brains. But why was the
story told, and why of Tuna? Tuna was an eel, and women may not eat
eels; and Ina was the moon, who, a Mangaian Selene, loved no Latmian
shepherd, but an eel. Seriously, I fail to understand Mr. Max Muller's
explanation. Given the problem, to explain a no longer intelligible
plant-name--brains of Tuna--(applied not to a plant but to the kernel of
a nut), this name is explained by saying that the moon, Ina, loved an
eel, cut off his head at his desire, and buried it. Thence sprang
cocoanut trees, with a fanciful likeness to a human face--face of Tuna--on
the nut. But still, why Tuna? How could the moon love an eel, except on
my own general principle of savage 'levelling up' of all life in all
nature? In my opinion, the Mangaians wanted a fable to account for the
resemblance of a cocoanut to the human head--a resemblance noted, as I
show, in our own popular slang. The Mangaians also knew the moon, in her
mythical aspect, as Ina; and Tuna, whatever his name may mean (Mr. Max
Muller does not tell us), was an eel. {17} Having the necessary savage
major premise in their minds, 'All life is on a level and
interchangeable,' the Mangaians thought well to say that the

Martha Finley (1828 - 1909) was a teacher and author of numerous works, the most well known being the 28 volume Elsie Dinsmore series which was published over a span of 38 years. The daughter of Presbyterian minister Dr. James Brown Finley and his wife and cousin Maria Theresa Brown Finley, she was born on April 26th, 1828 in Chillicothe, Ohio. Finley wrote many of her books under the psodonym Martha Farquharson. She died in 1909 in Elkton, Maryland, where she moved in 1876.

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