PREFACE TO THE SECOND A-QI.UME. 



usually represented to have been. The gradual drj-ing of the 

 Caspian Sea loft the interior of Asia more and more barren, the 

 knowledge of the useful metals facilitated the conquest of the 

 savages of the West, and it is likely that predatory bands of Iluns 

 and Turks, and allied nomadic nations, accelerated the movement 

 by rendering the labours of agriculture less remunerative. Thus 

 the migration, being one that proceeded from constantly acting 

 causes, extended over many centuries. Let us lay aside all pre- 

 possessions, and inquire what light is thrown by the following 

 vocabulary upon the real state of the Germanic tribes at that period. 



" In these mere names of plants, setting aside all other sources 

 of information, we discover that these people came from their homes 

 in the East with a knowledge of letters, and the useful metals, 

 and with nearly all the domestic animals ; that they cultivated Oats, 

 Barley, Wheat, Eye, and Beans ; built houses of timber, and 

 thatched them, and, what is more important, as showing that their 

 pasture and arable land was intermixed and acknowledged as private 

 property, they hedged their fields, and fenced their gardens. Cajsar 

 denies this ; but the frontier tribes, with whom he was acquainted, 

 were living under certain peculiar Mark laws, and were in fact 

 little else than an army on its march. The unquestionable native, 

 and not Latin or Celtic origin of such names as Beech and Haw- 

 thorn, or Oats and Wheat, proves that although our ancestors may 

 have been indebted to the provincials of the empire for their fruit- 

 trees, and some other luxuries, for a knowledge of the fine arts, 

 and the Latin literature, and a debased Christianity, the more 

 essential acquirements upon which their prosperity and progress 

 as a nation depended were already in their possession. 



"Like the scattered lights that a traveller from (he wilderness 

 sees here and there in a town that lies shrouded in the darkness of 

 night in a valley beneath him, and the occasional indistinct and 

 solitary voice of some domestic animal, that for a moment breaks 

 the silence, these distant echoes of the past, these specks that 

 glimmer from its obscurity, faint as they arc, and few and far 

 between, assure us that wc arc contemplating a scene of human 

 industry, and peace, and civilization. 



