Note 3 — II. Authorities on Philippine Dialects.

In the Aeta language of the Negritos, or little black men, perhaps the primitive race of the Philippines—whose name I have encountered in many forms of spelling, as Ata, Ataa, Aeta, Agta, Aita, Ita, Itaa,3 there are similarly, only two works known to Retana, whose bibliographical notices have been of so much value,—one a Report on the Philippine Islands (Paris, 1885), addressed to the French Minister of Public Instruction by J. Montano, a book of over two hundred and nine pages, illumined with numerous phototypes, and, what renders it of exceptional value, enriched with vocabularies, “the first,” Retana declares, in Aeta, Bilaan, Manobo (of the natives of Mindanao), Sámal and Tagacaolo dialects.