5i6 THE POPULAR SCIEXCE MONTHLY. 



When, ill place of mere juxtaposition, eacli remaining in the place 

 it has occupied for an indefinite time, the different nations, from any 

 cause whatever, come to be mixed together, they each bring their lan- 

 guage ; and, in consequence of the fusion, each brings his part of the 

 language that becomes common. A language so formed is a mixed 

 language, which consists of words and turns of phrases recalling the 

 mother-languages which gave it birth. 



Here, again, history shows us that this thing has actually been 

 done. The English language, for example, has words and expressions 

 which bring to mind the languages of all the races that have been 

 mixed and confounded in that isle. 



Consequently, when we enter for the first time a country of which 

 we know not the history, and find a population presenting in its lan- 

 guage words and phrases borrowed from other languages, on the right 

 and on the left, we are authorized to conclude that this population 

 results from the mixture of anthropological elements, which imply the 

 linguistic elements themselves. 



We may go still further. 



Language, you know, changes — is transformed with time. The 

 French language of our day is not the French of five centuries ago ; 

 the Frenchman of to-day must study specially and with dictionaries 

 before he can read the French of the past. 



So, language alters, changes, even when there has been no dis- 

 placement of population. And all the more when immigration inter- 

 venes ; if mixtures occur, the language will be altered, and a new lan- 

 guage will arise. This new language may differ so much from the 

 primitive one as to appear at first to have no resemblance to it. This 

 may happen not only for one people and for one language, but for 

 many. A language may also become the mother of many different 

 languages. But these daughter languages always preserve something, 

 in common with that from which they descended ; and men who have 

 made these questions the object of continued study, the linguists, know 

 very well how to discover the filiation. They know how to rise from 

 derivative languages to their primitive tongues. In this way they 

 attach together people that were thought to be very distinct because 

 they spoke languages that at first seemed very different. 



It is by this study, wholly recent, but which for some years has 

 advanced with the stride of a giant, that w^e are able to unite in one 

 source most of the people who now cover almost the whole of Europe ; 

 such as, on the one hand, the French, the Germans, the Swedes, and 

 the Spanish ; and, on the other, the people who inhabit Persia and 

 the valley of the Ganges. These people constitute what is called the 

 Aryan race. 



More marvelous still, thanks to the comparison of languages, a 

 philosopher of Geneva, M. Adolph Pictet, was able to trace a sort of 

 history of the primitive Aryans, the common parents of Europeans, 



