1895.] ^^ [Brinton. 



and hair, somewhat prognathic, beard rather scanty. In proto- 

 historic times they extended through central Europe from the 

 Pyrenees to the Bosphorus, and included the Rhpetians, Cro- 

 atians, Roumanians and Dacians. The modern Auvergnats and 

 Savoyards retain the type in its greatest purity.* 



The Aryan languages are preeminently inflectional. The proto- 

 historic members of the family in Asia were the Hellenic, the 

 Armenian, the Iranian and the Indian (Sanscrit) groups. To 

 these, which have been recognized by all, I would add the Celtic. 

 All are characterized by suffix-inflections, where the augment is 

 not a separate word, but can be used onlj' as a grammatical ad- 

 junct to the theme. 



But it is of prime ethnographic importance to note that this 

 represents a comparatively late stage in the growth of language. 

 Prof. Brugmann pertinentl^'^ remarics : " The first foundations of 

 inflections were laid by the fusion of independent elements. We 

 have to presuppose a period in which suflfixal elements were not 

 yet attached to words." f 



It is possible that some of the Arj-an tribes at the period of 

 their arrival in Asia still retained a condition of the common 

 tongue in which the suffixes were loosely attached to the stem 

 and preserved their independence as words. An Aryan lan- 

 guage in this stage might easily be mistaken for one which is 

 agglutinative. 



The Semitic Stock. 



As I have already said, the " area of characterization " of the 

 Semitic stock is now genei'ally admitted to have been in Arabia. 



When its members began to expand from that centre towards 

 the east and north, the configuration of the land dictated the 

 course they had to pursue. The arid surfaces of the Arabian 

 and Syrian deserts lay between them and the fertile Mesopota- 

 raian depression. They were obliged to follow the coast of the 

 Mediterranean and the vales of the Syrian mountains near it for 

 the distance of five or six degrees of latitude northward, before 

 they could turn to the east and reach the '• Stream-land " (Na- 

 harin) watered by the Orontes and the upper Euphrates (about 

 36° N. Lat.). 



* Hovelacque et Herv6, Pricis d' Anthropologie, p. 5S2, sq. 



t Karl Brugmann, Comparative Orammar of the Indo-Germanic Languages, Vol. i, pp. 14-lG. 



