general propositions are most readily produced, but are wrongly combined. Want of use is most certainly not the cause of arrest of braindevelopment. Brothers are the best instructors; and the Aztec children had such older than themselves and sane. Mr. BURKE thought that the negro blood in the Aztec children might easily have been known by the curly hair; the type of features was somewhat Jewish. The liveliness of the children, inherited from their Indian forefathers, illustrated the rule that idiots manifest the characteristics of the race to which they belong. Mr BOLLAERT thought it very unlikely that there was any Jewish blood in these Aztecs; if they had come from New Granada, it might have been less improbable. Dr. HUNT remarked on our ignorance of the causes and limits of reversion to an ancestral type psychologically, if not anatomically; and insisted on the great importance, in such cases as Mr. Gore's, of =getting full information as to the parents and other relatives of idiots. Mr. BURKE said we can limit the reversion to type, and that no one ever heard of any one case of reversion out of a race. The DUKE OF ROUSSILLON mentioned a case of type of features being preserved for ten centuries in his own family; and also of certain towns in Italy where the inhabitants are decidedly of the Saxon -type. Mr. PRIDEAUX said, with regard to the Neanderthal cranium, a cast of which was exhibited, that he saw no evidence of idiotcy in the shape of the skull, the capacity being apparently very considerable. Mr. C. C. BLAKE considered the Neanderthal cranium too fragImentary to allow of any safe estimate of its capacity being given. There appeared to be a considerable resemblance between the occiput of that skull and that of the skull of the idiot whose brain Mr. Gore had described. The large size of the orbits of the latter skull is also remarkable. The PRESIDENT adjourned the meeting. APRIL 21ST, 1863. (The reports of this meeting will be inserted in the second number of the The HONORARY SECRETARY read the following extracts from a letter from M. Paul Broca, Secrétaire-général to the Société d'Anthropologie de Paris, addressed to Dr. James Hunt, President of the Anthropological Society of London. "DEAR SIR,—A long time ago, I received the letter in which you announced to me the foundation of the Anthropological Society of London, to which I certainly should have replied at once, to express to you all the interest which I take in your work. . . . Such was, my dear colleague, the cause of the delay of my reply. But your letter, which I received this morning, has caused my regret that I did not write to you sooner. Have the kindness to accept my apologies. You cannot doubt the satisfaction with which the Paris Society has learnt that you are about to found in London a society established on the same bases as our own, and which we shall consider as our sistersociety. The Paris Society does not feel any doubt respecting the success of an undertaking directed by a man like yourself. At London, as at Paris, experience has demonstrated the insufficiency of the Ethnological societies. Ethnology is merely one of the branches of Anthropology. To give to the study of man all its development, to create a veritable science, it is necessary to regard it under every point of view, and bring to bear at the same time the resources of anatomy, physiology, hygiene, ethnology, philology, history, archæology, and palæontology. Since we founded at Paris a Society of Anthropology, we believe that we have been justified by experience, and that the necessity of comprehending all these studies under one head, to make them lead towards one object, will not long remain unrecognized. Already MM. Wagner and von Baer have organized in Germany Anthropological Congresses which will become periodical. The Anthropological Society of London will fulfil the same task; and we have the firmest hopes that, after the conclusion of the American crisis, the savants of the United States will in their turn experience the desire to organize a society of anthropology. . . . I am highly flattered that you should have considered that the translation of my Mémoire sur l'Hybridité may prove of service. In this respect, I give you the fullest powers. If you think it right that some passages should be abridged or suppressed, you can do so at your pleasure, and I shall remain at your service to correct the proofs. Thursday next, the committee propose to establish with your society a regular exchange of publications, and to give to this measure a retroactive application since the establishment of our society. With fresh expressions of my excuses, Agréez, mon cher collégue, &c. "Le Secrétaire-général, BROCA. "To Dr. James Hunt, F.S.A., THE ANTHROPOLOGICAL REVIEW. AUGUST, 1863. ON THE SCIENCE OF LANGUAGE.* BY RICHARD STEPHEN CHARNOCK, Esq.. F.S.A., F.R.G.S., F.A.S.L. In the year 1861, Professor Max Müller, at the request of the Royal Institution of Great Britain, delivered a series of lectures on the Science of Language. These lectures have since been brought out in a separate volume, with many learned notes and additions; which, in 1862, had reached a third edition. The work embraces nearly everything that could be treated of on the science of language; as the growth in contradistinction to the history of language; the empirical, theoretical, and classificatory stages; the genealogical and morphological classification of languages; comparative grammar; the constituent elements of language; and the origin of languages. These heads include phonetic decay, dialectic regeneration, a discourse on modern languages and dialects, demonstrative roots, the terminational stage, and the natural selection of roots. Although I feel quite unable to criticize, in the way that it deserves, any work from the pen of so distinguished a linguist as Professor Müller, I will nevertheless take the liberty of making a few remarks upon his arduous undertaking. Professor Müller says: "I had lived long enough in England to know that the peculiar difficulties arising from an imperfect knowledge of the language would be more than balanced by the forbearance of an English audience; and I had such perfect faith in my subject, that I thought it might be trusted even in the hands of a less skilful expositor." Any one who has carefully read through the work will doubtless be of opinion that Professor Müller had no need of any forbearance whatever; The present article is based upon a paper read before the Anthropological Society of London, June 9th, 1863. + Lectures on the Science of Language, delivered at the Royal Institution of Great Britain in April, May, and June, 1861, by Max Müller, M.A. London: 8vo, 3rd ed. Longman: 1862. VOL. I.NO. II. and that it would be quite as well if authors of the present age would take example from his simple and unaffected style. Philologists have for a long time bewildered themselves and the rest of the world in their search after a primitive language; and the number of theories thereon, and on the origin and affinities of some of the principal languages, is somewhat amusing. Dr. Murray derives language from nine principal roots, viz., ag, bag, cwag, dwag, mag, nag, rag, swag, tag,* a theory which I shall take the liberty of christening from the doctor's own roots, the tag-rag or c(w)ag-mag theory. Dr. Schmidt, in a homœopathical manner, derives all Greek words from the root e, and all Latin words from the arch-radical hi,† in which he and I do not agree. Most Eastern writers give the preference in point of antiquity to the Syriac Camden and many learned writers ascribe priority to the Chaldee. Dr. Webster says, "the descendants of Noah journeyed from the East, and settled in the plain of Shinar, or in Chaldea; that the language used at that time by the inhabitants of that plain must then have been the oldest or the primitive language of man; and this must have been the original Chaldee." The Jews contend that the Hebrew language was the most ancient; and with them many Christian writers agree, as Chrysostom, Augustin, Origen, Jerome, among the ancients; Bochart, Heidigger, Buxtorf, Selden, and Dr. Sharpe, among the moderns. Guichard ‡ maintained that as Hebrew was written from right to left, and Greek from left to right, Greek words might be traced back to Hebrew by being simply read from right to left. Lord Monboddo says, "I have supposed that language could not be invented without supernatural assistance; and, accordingly, I have maintained that it was the invention of the dæmon kings of Egypt, who, being more than men, first taught themselves to articulate, and then taught others. But, even among them, I am persuaded there was a progress in the art, and that such a language as the Shanskrit was not at once invented." The Arabs very reasonably dispute the priority of antiquity with the Hebrews; whilst the Armenians consider their language the most ancient, because the ark first rested in Armenia. Again, some authors maintain that the language spoken by Adam is lost, and that the Hebrew, Chaldee, and Arabic are only dialects of the original lan * Cf. Max Müller, p. 343. + Ibid., cf. Curtius, Griechische Etymologie. L'Harmonie Etymologique des Langues Hébraique, Chaldaique, Syriaque, Greque, Latin, Françoise, Italienne, Espagnole, Allemande, Flamende, Anglaise, etc., par Estienne Guichard. Paris: 1806. guage; and that Abraham spoke Chaldee before he passed the Eu. phrates, and that he first acquired a knowledge of Hebrew in the land of Canaan. According to Reading, the Abyssinian was the primitive language; Stiernhielm and Rudbeckius contend for Swedish; Verstegan, Junius, and Ray for Saxon; Skinner for Belgic and Teutonic; Lye for Icelandic; Salmasius, Boxhorn and Aurelius for Scythian; Hugo for Latin; Erici for Greek: whilst others, with more love for their country than for truth, have traced Greek and Latin to German and Celtic. Indeed some have gone so far as to assert that Hebrew and its sister dialect, the Phoenician, are based upon Celtic. Court de Gébélin, in a work in nine quarto volumes,* endeavours to derive Latin and French from a pretended primitive tongue. He considers speech as an instinct, and every language as a dialect of what he calls "primitive, inspired by God Himself, natural, necesrary, universal, and imperishable." He treats Persian, Armenian, Malay, and Coptic as dialects of Hebrew; derives Latin from Celtic; and discovers Hebrew, Greek, English, and French words in the idioms of America. Herodotust tells us, that in consequence of a dispute between the Egyptians and Phrygians concerning the antiquity of their respective languages, Psammetichus, king of Egypt, ordered two children to be brought up with a prohibition that no word should be pronounced in their presence, but that nature should be left to speak for herself; and that the first word they uttered was BEKKOS, which in Phrygian signified "bread"; and that the Egyptians, convinced by this experiment, admitted that the Phrygians were more ancient than themselves. Again, a preference in point of antiquity has also been given to the Chinese. It has been urged that the Chinese are the posterity of Noah, and that Fohi, the first king of China, was Noah himself. Mr. Webb, an ingenious writer in the reign of Charles II, strenuously maintains that the Chinese is the only original language, and that it was spoken in Paradise. Its antiquity is said to be strengthened by its singularity, consisting, as it does, of few words, all monosyllables, and from its simplicity of construction, having no variety of declensions, conjugations, or grammatical rules. Celtic scholars assert their language to be the most ancient.‡ * Le Monde primitif analysé et comparé avec le monde moderne. Paris: 1773; containing etymological vocabularies of the Latin and French languages. + “ Ευτερπή.” Cleland has a partiality for the Celtic. Cf. Fauchet, Antiquités Gauloises; Bacon, Recherches sur les origines Celtiques; Le Brigant, Éléments de la langue des Celtes; Frippault, Celt-hellenisme. |