When I was in the Solomons I met a native of the Trobriand Islands, who told me that among his people the term _tabu_ was applied both to grandparents and to the father’s sister’s child. I went into the whole subject as fully as was possible with only one witness, but in spite of his obvious intelligence and good faith, I remained doubtful whether the information was correct. The feature in question, however, occurs in the list of Trobriand terms drawn up for Dr. Seligmann[28] by Mr. Bellamy, and with this double warrant it must be accepted. It is a feature which would follow from marriage with the daughter’s daughter, for by this marriage one who was previously a father’s sister’s daughter becomes the wife of a grandfather and thereby attains the status of a grandparent. The feature exists alone, and, further, it is combined with other applications of the term which deprive it of some of its significance; nevertheless, the fact that a peculiar and exceptional feature of a Melanesian system of relationship is such as would follow naturally from a form of marriage which is practised in another part of Melanesia cannot be passed over. Standing alone, it would be wholly insufficient to justify the conclusion that the marriage with the daughter’s daughter was ever prevalent among the Massim, but in place of expressing a dogmatic denial, let us look for other features of Massim sociology which may have been the results of such a marriage. [28] See _The Melanesians of British New Guinea_, Cambridge, 1910, p. 707. In Wagawaga[29] there is a peculiar term, _warihi_, which is used by men for other men of their own generation and social group, but the term is also applied by an old man or woman to one of a younger generation. Again, in Tubetube[30] the term for a husband, _taubara_, is also a term for an old man, and the term for the wife is also applied to an old woman. These usages may be nothing more than indications of respect for a husband or wife, or of some mechanism which brought those differing widely in age into one social category, but with the clue provided by the Trobriand term of relationship it becomes possible, though even now only possible, that the Wagawaga and Tubetube customs may have arisen out of a social condition in which it was customary to have great disparity of age between husbands and wives, and social relations between old and young following from such disparity in the age of consorts. [29] _Ibid._, pp. 482 and 436. [30] _The Melanesians of British New Guinea_, Cambridge, 1910, p. 482.