The preface to his collection of Myths and Songs from the South Pacific
was written by me in 1876; and if Mr. A. Lang had only read the whole
chapter which treats of these Tree-Myths (p. 77 seq.), he would easily
have perceived the real character of the Tuna story, and would not have
placed it in the same class as the Daphne story; he would have found that
the white kernel of the cocoanut was, in Mangaia, called the "brains of
Tuna," a name like many more such names which after a time require an
explanation.

'Considering that "cocoanut" was used in Mangaia in the sense of head
(testa), the kernel or flesh of it might well be called the brain. If
then the white kernel had been called Tuna's brain, we have only to
remember that in Mangaia there are two kinds of cocoanut trees, and we
shall then have no difficulty in understanding why these twin cocoanut
trees were said to have sprung from the two halves of Tuna's brain, one
being red in stem, branches, and fruit, whilst the other was of a deep
green. In proof of these trees being derived from the head of Tuna, we
are told that we have only to break the nut in order to see in the
sprouting germ the two eyes and the mouth of Tuna, the great eel, the
lover of Ina. For a full understanding of this very complicated myth
more information has been supplied by Mr. Gill. Ina means moon; Ina-mae-
aitu, the heroine of our story, means Ina-who-had-a-divine (aitu) lover,
and she was the daughter of Kui, the blind. Tuna means eel, and in
Mangaia it was unlawful for women to eat eels, so that even now, as Mr.
Gill informs me, his converts turn away from this fish with the utmost
disgust. From other stories about the origin of cocoanut trees, told in
the same island, it would appear that the sprouts of the cocoanut were
actually called eels' heads, while the skulls of warriors were called
cocoanuts.