Preserving the Languages spoken by Uncivilized Nations. 97 



server to ascertain, with a tolerable degree of precision, the age 

 or period in the past history of man, to which their erection 

 may be referred. In short, I conceive that the ruins in ques- 

 tion afford us a means of ascertaining the period at which the 

 forefathers of the modern Polynesian and Indo-American 

 races originally took their departure from the Indian Archi- 

 pelago." (Dr. Lang's Origin and Migrations of the Polynesian 

 Nation, p. 203-4.) 



The views of Dr. Lang, although founded on observation and 

 supported by several independent facts, and also possessing in 

 my opinion a great degree of probability, can only be regarded 

 as an hypothetical solution of the mystery which involves the 

 history and languages of the races to which it refers. It must 

 be remembered that it is opposed to the views of that great 

 Polynesian scholar W. Marsden, and is yet more decidedly 

 at variance with the opinion of the learned author of an article 

 on the Oceanic languages in the Foreign Quarterly Review. 

 It is the opinion of that author that the various insular lan- 

 guages, as well as the continental, are in most cases distinct 

 and indigenous, and that the numerous coincidences which 

 are met with, and which he is compelled to admit as evidence 

 of a common connecting cause, are the result of infusions from 

 one common source into preexisting languages. To support 

 this view the reviewer has recourse to the hypothesis that there 

 had, at some former period, existed somewhere in the Indian 

 Archipelago one of those independent foci of civilization 

 which he calls in to his aid for the solution of several of the 

 difficulties with which the subject abounds. I must confess 

 that it seems to me much more probable that the languages 

 spoken in the Oceanic Islands, whatever may have been their 

 origin, have been introduced into the different islands very much 

 in the same state in which we find them : this idea seems not 

 only more consistent with the general similarity which prevails 

 amongst the inhabitants of those islands with respect to pecu- 

 liarities of race, manners, and religion, but also with the pre- 

 vailing character of the languages themselves. Moreover, 

 there is a want of simplicity in the conjecture that these islands 

 have each received for themselves, by infusion from a common 

 source, those words on which the most striking similarity de- 

 pends; it seems to involve the necessity of numerous accidents, 

 precisely similar to each other, having happened to each of 

 these inhabited islands. Difficulties of this kind are sufficient 

 to show that we are still greatly in want of the data from which 

 a solution can be drawn. 



It is of the utmost importance that those who observe, de- 

 scribe, and collect these data should give the naked but com- 



Third Series. Vol. 7. No. 38. Aug. 1835. O 



