€22 JOURNAL, BOMBAY NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY, Vol. XV. 



In German, " bueh-stab ", equivalent to " beech-stave", still means a 

 letter, and the old runic tablets are found to be made of this wood. 



Fir is another trao-name native both to the North and South of 

 Europe. Fir-ires is equivalent to fire-tree, the wood, from its resinous 

 nature, being exceedingly inflammable ; but its Latin form qvercus is 

 applied not to the fir but to the oak. We see, then, that the Teutonic 

 name for fir means in Latin an oak ; while the Greek name for oak 

 m;ans in the Latin and Teutonic tongues a beech; and, in connection 

 with this ohange of meaning, Prof. Max. Midler has pointed out that 

 the remains of trees in the peat-bogs of Denmark show that at one time 

 the fir was the prevailing tree in that part of Europe, but that later on it 

 was succeeded by the oak, and more recently still by the beech. He 

 consider that these facts go some way towards proving that Arian 

 languages were spoken in Europe as far back in geological time as when 

 the fir was still the predominant tree in Denmark, and that the transfer 

 of name from one tree to another took place as each became the 

 more common. This view has been strongly combated by other 

 professors, and as doctors disagree, I suppose we disciples are free to 

 form our own opinions. To me it seems more probable that the 

 names were at first generic, the predecessor of beech meaning any 

 forest tree producing food for man or cattle, and the predecessor of fir 

 any suitable for firewood, but that the names were subsequently special- 

 ised to different trees by different branches of the Arian race. 



Our word oat appears to have been in its earliest stages in like manner 

 a generic term, and to have included, as its Welsh equivalent " yd " still 

 does, any description of grain : but the Anglo-Saxons specialised it to the 

 particular kind of corn that we now know by the name, while the 

 Romans applied it, as ador, to spelt, said by Latin authors to have been 

 the earliest food of their nation. It is derived from a root which exists 

 in our word "eat "; and Dr. Prior points out that the word seems to 

 have originally meant " food." 



Coming next to names native in various Teutonic languages, but not 

 extending to other families of language, the first example I would cite 

 is " ivheat ". As this grain bears a name etymological) y distinct in each 

 of the families of Arian languages, the inference is that it was not, like 

 barley, in cultivation before the primitive nation had broken up, but was 

 acquired by the different sections after they had separated from each 

 other. The acquisition must, however, have taken place before the 



