To establish linguistic families from the dialectic material on hand is sometimes an easy, sometimes a difficult task. Success depends as well on the correctness and fullness of the material, as on the ethnologic and linguistic knowledge of the investigator. All historic and sentimental bias of every description must be entirely got rid of in making inquiries of this character.

To establish distinct families of languages is tantamount not only to establishing the ancient state of nationalities, but of racial discrepancies among tribes. Radical difference in language always proves an original diversity, more or less strong, of bodily constitution; but, on the other side, racial difference is not, empirically speaking, always accompanied by radical linguistic diversity. There are rare instances recorded in history where one race was forced or prevailed upon to adopt the language of another. The disparity of linguistic families shows conclusively, that the respective tribes or nations have formed their idioms in countries distant from each other, and in most instances, widely distant, isolated from each other and in mutual ignorance of each other Thus the Yuchi tribe, whose ancient habitat is the country extending between the Chatahutchi and the Savannah Rivers, viz., the central parts of Georgia, were always regarded as a peculiar people by the Maskoki surrounding them; their language entirely differs from the Maskoki idiom, and if the national legend of the latter tribe, which pretends that they were originally Trans-Mississippians, has any foundation in fact, it would form an argument to prove that the Yuchi inhabited the Gulf territories east of the Mississippi long before the Maskoki. If this was so, the Yuchi then probably occupied a much larger area of territory than they did in the eighteenth century.

Wherever we see linquistic families covering a small area only, we are entitled to assume that the people speaking them resisted with success, through the course of centuries, wars, inroads, famine and other disturbances which have exterminated many other communities. Must we ascribe the large number of these families on the Western slope to a more peaceable disposition of the coast tribes, because they lived on fish rather than on game, or is the cause of it the protection afforded by high-towering mountain ridges? For both causes reasons can be adduced, and many other causes may have operated also.

A comparative study of the languages and dialects of a country leads to inquiries into the radical portion of the idioms compared. To trace the derivation of a word, is to trace its history and that of the

ideas which became connected with it in the lapse of centuries. We are brought to distinguish between loan words borrowed from other idioms and words pertaining to the language itself. Loan words are most important for tracing international commerce, social intercourse, the spread of certain ideas concerning law, philosophy, religion, art and science. The loan words from Sanscrit and Zend discovered in Genesis and other Hebrew texts of Scripture have proved the existence of commercial relations between the Hebrews and the coasts of Persia and India. A large number of loan words in the Latin language, of which we mention alauda, tenca, lar, lucumo, classis, gubernare, pulcher, purpur, burgum, ambactus, tunica, ambubaia, show conclusively that there existed in historic and prehistoric times connections of the people of the Latium with the Gauls, Etruscans, Greeks, Germans and Semites. Discoveries comparable to these will be made concerning Indian intertribal commerce, as soon as our scientists can be brought at last to comprehend the importance of these researches.

Linguistic studies undertaken for the purpose of advancing ethnographic knowledge may bring forth results not less important. The curious fact that sun, moon and month are called by the same term in many, if not in the majority of Indian languages, must raise within us the query, "Why is this so?" The Timucua term for the moon is acuhiba, "the one who tells." In the Klamath language of southwestern Oregon sun and moon is shápash, "the indicator," and here the moon has another name besides, ukaúkōsh, "the broken one, the one going to pieces;" in Klamath myths the Moon is the Sun's son. Analogous to this "indicator of time" is the English moon, originally man, the “measuring one," the measurer of time.

No less instructive for historic ethnology are the terms for woman. In English both wife and woman (wip and wip-man in Anglo-Saxon) mean" the weaver, the weaving person," the latter being merely a compound of the former; originally wife had no reference to the married state. The Latin femina, the Greek gynē have reference to child-bearing, but in the Pit River language wife is tēlúmē, iteluma, "the worker," from italúmi, to work; in the Ara or Károk language on the Klamath River, Northern California, woman and wife is ashiktáwa, "the carrier;" in the Klamath of Oregon woman and wife, in the singular number, is snawédshash, "adorned with neckwear." Not devoid of signification is the circumstance that in many western languages the same word is used for wife and woman.