134 



successive coal bed, not so much by any individual fossil, as by some 

 different group of plants, the plants themselves being nevertheless 

 found in higher and lower beds than the one so marked, we in like 

 manner will be able to distinguish languages ethnologically by this 

 grouping of forms of words common to all, under special ideas. 



'S. Charts like these prove the reality of certain facts in philology 

 sometimes doubled; the reality, for instance, oi' derivative reversion; 

 as in the Greek Aoy, Hebrew h)p; Go-bo-l, becomes Go-lo-ba, &c. 

 This will be of importance in discussing the kinship of neighbouring 

 nations with inverted names such as Dorians and Rhodians, Italians 

 and Latins, Berbers and Arabs, &c. I have pursued my own researches 

 for some years with this in view as an established fact, that the bou- 

 strophedon manner of writing is a reality in etymology and ethnology, 

 as it was in mythology and common history. It made no difference 

 to the inventor of a word whether one symbol or another came first, 

 for he did not write to express a previously known sound (as we do), 

 but set down the symbols of his ideas and afterwards accepted 

 the sounds they gave him. In other words, in this department of 

 philology letters make words and not words letters.* 



4. It seems to be evident that the liquids and dentals, as a rule, 

 replace each other not by alteration but by alternation, for none of 

 these columns worked well until the L's and R's were put under one 

 head and the Ts, Ds and N under another. There are, of course, 

 many exceptional cases of true organic mutation. — In like manner it 

 seems clear that the terminal NG of many languages is not a mere 

 nasality, but that the G is the relic of a lost syllable beginning with 

 a guttural. 



5. The loss of consonantal elements is seen to be indicated by the 

 presence of diphthongs or groups of vowels, and especially by the 

 concentrated diphi hongs O and U. Also, the fact appears that not 

 only any diphthong, but any strong vowel, can in time come to re- 

 place not the labials only but any one of all the consonants; and our 

 only salvation from this utter confusion to result from such a law — a 

 veritable law of disorder or decomposition — is a systematic and general 

 classification of words, not according to men's theories of etymological 

 relationships, but in a mechanical way, as we classify fossils and 



* Dr. Pickering has draAvn my attention to the curious adventure, reported 

 by Ilale, of certain New Zealand savages who were drifted to another and 

 distant ishand, and commemorated their salvation on its shores by deliberately 

 revertiiug their whole vocabulary, pronouncing every word backwards. 



