Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 7.djvu/207

 10 S. VII. MARCH 2, 1907.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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III. Upper Chindwin, Bhamo, Myitkyina, Katha, and Ruby Mines Districts, and the Northern Shan .States.

IV. Upper Chindwin District.

V. The Southern Shan States.

VI. The Toungoo,Thaton,and Amherst Districts, and the Southern Shan States.

VII. The Ruby Mines District and the Southern
 * and Northern Shan States.

VIII. The Southern and Northern Shan States.

IX. The Ruby Mines, Bhamo, and Myitkyina Districts, and the Northern and Southern Shan .'States.

X. The Bhamo and Myitkyina Districts.

XI. Amherst, Tavoy, and Mergui Districts, and the Southern Shan States.

XII. Mergui District.

It is worth while recording the above list in ' N. & Q.', if it were only for the sake of having; it at hand when wanted.

H. H. S.

" TOBACCO " : ITS ETYMOLOGY. The full history of this word is not given in any dic- tionary. It is, of course, a matter of common knowledge that it was picked up by the Spaniards in the Antilles, and originally meant the pipe through which the Indians either smoked or snuffed the plant. An interesting article in The American Anthro- pologist, as far back as 1889 (vol. ii. p. 133), seems to have escaped the attention of our lexicographers. It is by Dr. A. Ernst, and he shows that in the Tupi language of Brazil taboca is still the name of these primitive Indian pipes. It will perhaps be asked what connexion there is, linguistically, between Brazil and Hayti. Having been engaged for many years looking up ety- mologies of American terms for the ' N.E.D.,' I am able to say that the Tupi language of Brazil and the Carib dialects of Guiana and the isles had a large vocabulary in common. 'The explanation is, not that the languages -were cognate, but that the Caribs borrowed from their neighbours. Many zoological terms in English such as agouti, cabiai, coati, quata may have come to us from either Tupi or Carib. The same is true of many botanical terms such as karatas, moriche, tannia and to these we may safely a,dd the word tobacco. The two forms in which it has been preserved, Tupi taboca and Haytian tabdco, are both accented upon the middle syllable, and differ so slightly that we need feel no doubt as to their identity. We thus arrive at the valuable fact that tobacco is properly a Brazilian term, but early passed over into Guiana, and accompanied the Caribs in their voyages among the West Indian islands, where it took root, and was found by the followers of Columbus.

JAS. PLATT, Jun.

" POSSESSION NINE POINTS OF THE LAW." In connexion with this quasi-legal maxim, I think the question was asked some time ago, " How many points has the law, and what are they ? " The question did not show much appreciation of the meaning of of the maxim ; but it may perhaps be answered according to its wisdom, by saying, " The law (like anything else) has just as many points as you choose to attribute to t for the purpose of stating a proportion. When you say (as most people do at present) that possession is nine points of the law, you suppose ' the law ' to have ten points ; but f you say, in accordance with earlier usage, you suppose ' the law ' to have twelve points ; while, if you say, as has also been said, that possession is ninety-nine points of the law, you suppose ' the law ' to have a hundred points." In other words, the question is not how many points " the law has, but what proportion of all the points possession is equal to. The actual purport of the maxim, of course, is that, in a dispute about property, possession is (or used to be, when the saying arose in the fifteenth century) so strong a point in favour of the possessor, that it might outweigh nine, or eleven, or ninety-nine points that might legally be pleaded in behalf of some one else. The historical illustration of the expression will be found in the next issue of the ' Dic- tionary,' in which ' Point ' will form one of the important articles.
 * hat possession is eleven points of the law,

J. A. H. MURRAY.

(gmrus.

WE must request correspondents desiring in- formation on family matters of only private interest to affix their names and addresses to their queries, in order that answers may be sent to them direct.

MOHAMMED AMISM IN JAPAN. In ' The Encyclopaedia Britannica,' art. ' Sunnites and Shi'ites ' (vol. xxii. p. 659), Japan is included among the countries over which the religion of Mohammed is more or less spread. Also in Major-General Forlong's ' Short Studies in the Science of Comparative Religions,' 1897, p. 469, we find Japan with China and the adjacent islands stated to contain thirty millions of Mohammedans. I desire to be informed of any authoritative report or observation upon which these statements are reasonably founded.

KUMAGUSU MlNAKATA.

Tanabe, Kii, Japan.