Physical conformation.—Maximum and, perhaps, average stature higher than in Micronesia. Aquiline nose commoner. Varieties both of hair and complexion. The former wavy and curled as well as straight; sometimes chestnut-coloured. Skin, often fairest in the parts nearest the Equator; becoming darker as the distance increases. Oftener, also, darker in the coralline than in the volcanic islands.
Face oval. Ears generally large.
Zygomatic development moderate. Occipito-frontal profiles truncated behind, elevated at the vertex.
Nostrils generally spreading.
Language.—Dialects mutually intelligible; probably unintelligible to the Micronesians.
Political relations.—Wholly independent, colonized, or protected.
Religion.—Paganism, Romanism, Protestantism, Imperfect Christianity.
European intermixture.—Chiefly English, American, and French.
Habits.—The superstition of the tabu; the use of kava as a drink. See the notice of Micronesia. Cannibalism, tattooing, circumcision, more or less, common.
With the view of saving repetition, a notice of the Polynesian mythology will precede the enumeration of the islands; for each and all of these the creed being, in its general principles, as truly one and the same as is the language, the same divinities appearing with the same functions and under similar, or but slightly-changed, denominations. Hence, sometimes the difference between two Pantheons is merely verbal. Generally, however, it is real. Even then, however, we find no new element; but one of two things. Either the same story appears in a varied form; or else some portion of the mythology which is but slightly prominent in one group of islands, takes unusual importance in another; the fundamental identity of character being manifest throughout.