such additional steps as are required by this chapter, we are compelled to feel our way as amid gloom. The leading thought relates to the hypothesis that there are historic or linguistic connections between the Aryan and other great families of language.

In the southwestern portions of Asia and in some of the adjacent parts of Africa is found a distinctly marked group of languages, whose characteristics are such as manifestly separate them from the Aryan family. This group has been called the SyroArabian family, but as this term does not include the Hebrew, the designation is felt to be too restricted; hence the word now usually employed is Semitic. This name has been adopted because this speech is supposed to have originated in the family of Shem. It appears to have been native in Palestine, Phoenicia, Syria, Mesopotamia, Babylonia, and Arabia. In very early times, however, it spread from Arabia over Ethiopia, throughout the Phoenician colonies, over many of the Mediterranean islands, and the whole of the Carthaginian coast. The three chief descendants are the Arabic, the Syriac, and the Hebrew.

The peculiarities of this speech, the simplicity of its structure, the comparative absence of compounds in the noun and verb, the restriction to two genders and to two tense forms, its word-stems consisting almost exclusively of three consonants, its numerous gutturals, with the three primary vowel sounds, clearly separate it far from the Aryan. Such is the Semitic tongue."

The requirements of the discussion will be met by making a single additional grouping of certain tongues which cannot be classed with either the Aryan or Semitic families. Canon Farrar suggests the term Sporadic as the most appropriate, since it can include all languages not belonging to either the Aryan or Semitic families. Professor Whitney prefers Agglutinative; while others have employed the word Allophylian, i. e., "spoken by other different tribes of the human family."

This group of tongues is found, first and last, to have ranged from Norway almost to Behrings Straits; it has occupied the larger part of Central Asia, and established footholds in southern Asia and in southern Europe; it is the speech of China, of Farther India, of the numberless islands scattered over the Pacific and Indian oceans, of the territories about and below the African equator, and of the native Americans from the Arctic to the Antarctic

seas.

The mind of the linguist is well-nigh bewildered in trying to bring anything like a distinct classification out of the speech of these multitudes of scattered races and tribes. At first glance they present, seemingly, "a vast seething mass of imperfectly known jargon." Still, it is admitted that there are shades of similarity as to general structure and as to certain connections and affiliations, though often remote, that fairly allow of a general grouping, which may become more definite and satisfactory as linguistic knowledge increases. It is possible

also that further investigation may succeed in tracing some of these scattered tongues back to the Aryan or to the Semitic stocks, or back to the roots of some primitive tongue not yet designated. At the present state of our knowledge it is hardly safe to do more than to group the Allophylian tongues into three classes, whose names suggest their marked peculiarities, namely, the Monosyllabic, the Agglutinating, and the Incorporating.

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We are thus led to the question of a supposed ancient alliance of these different families of speech.

It must be confessed at the outset that unless existing differences can be explained, in part at least, then such remote affiliation is extremely questionable. The study of speech-lore shows, however, that marked changes have taken place in all languages. "Transmutation of species in the kingdom of speech is no hypothesis, but a patent fact," and is the most recent postulate of linguistic science.

The facts with regard to the tongues of uncivilized peoples-those, for instance, of the Melanesian, the African, and the native American are, that books of instruction prepared by missionaries have become, in three or four generations, not only antiquated, but almost unintelligible. Even civilized peoples have not been able to fortify national speech against change and corruption. The dead languages furnish striking evidence. The ancient speech of Egypt, for illustration, commenced its changes among the illiterate masses. The priests, for sacred purposes, and the cultivated because it was aristocratic and fash

ionable, mutually clung to the earlier speech, while the masses, with their less conservative instincts and strong revolutionary impulses, drifted from it; the speech of the priesthood and the educated was forced to yield, and after a time was no longer heard in street or senate. The same essentially is true of the Zend, the Sanskrit, and the classical Greek. In the time of Cicero the tongues which are now the vehicles of the world's highest culture were called barbarian.

The rapidity with which linguistic changes among the civilized have taken place is surprising. At the time of Rome's grandest achievements, national songs, supposed to be about five hundred years old, were not intelligible even to those who were accustomed to sing them. The English of the eleventh would fail to answer the demands of the nineteenth century. There have been such changes, even within a hundred years, in the English vocabulary, that a person of a century ago, could he return, would be obliged to ask the meaning of many a word in everyday use.1 Except for the anchorage found in our standard literature, especially in the Bible and Shakspeare, and in the newspaper, in railway and telegraphic communications, and in our centralized form of government, there would grow up, after a time, in the widely separated sections of our country, dialects difficult to be understood, if, indeed, they could be understood at all, by the people of other sections. The Babel of tongues brought yearly to our

shores might end in confusion of speech like that of Melanesia or Africa.14

Following this line of thought a step further, the discovery will be made that many of the changes in speech take place in consequence of various easily defined causes. For instance, differences of climate and of natural scenery, in a word, differences in the various objects of perception, whatever they are, result in differences of speech, especially as to the words used. Words arise to meet the wants of the time; they disappear when no longer needed. Estrays and catch-words often come without announcement, answer their purpose, and then go without a farewell. Therefore, whenever a part of a great family migrates to new places, it may be safely stated that the original vocabulary will be modified in nearly exact proportion to the change of scenes and circumstances. The migrating part of the family would both drop certain words for which they had no further use, and coin new ones to meet the emergencies of the changed surroundings.

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Suppose, for illustration, that Dr. Franklin and his crew are now castaways upon some island in the North Pole Sea; that they are left without a literature, and are to have in the future no means of communicating with the outer world. It would be inevitable that marked and radical changes in the vocabulary of their descendants two hundred years hence would result. More than this: a change in the objects of perception produces a change in hu