576 ANNUAL REPOKT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1912. 



indeed necessary; in still other cases the two languages are at first 

 glance not at all similar, but reveal on a closer study so many funda- 

 mental traits in common that there seems just ground for suspecting 

 a common origin. If other languages can be found which serve to 

 lessen the chasm between the two, and particularly if it is possible to 

 compare them in the form in which they existed in earlier periods, 

 this suspicion of a common origin may be raised to a practical cer- 

 tainty. Thus, direct comparison of Russian and German would 

 certainly yield enough lexical and grammatical similiarites to justify 

 one m suspecting them to have diverged from a common source; the 

 proof of such genetic relationship, however, can not be considered 

 quite satisfactory until the oldest forms of German speech and Ger- 

 manic speech generally have been compared with the oldest forms of 

 Slavic speech and until both of these have been further compared with 

 other forms of si)eech, such as Latui and Greek, that there is reason 

 to believe they are genetically related to. When such extensive, not 

 infrequently difficult, comparisons have been effected, complete evi- 

 dence may often be obtamed of what in the first instance would have 

 been merely suspected. If all the forms of speech that can be shown 

 to be genetically related are taken together and carefully compared 

 among themselves, it is obvious that much information will be 

 inferred as to their earlier undocumented history; in favorable cases 

 much of the hyi^othetical form of speech from which the available 

 forms have diverged may be reconstructed with a considerable degree 

 of certainty or plausibiUty. If under the term " history of English " 

 we include not only documented but such reconstructed history as has 

 been referred to, we can say that at least in main outline it is possible 

 to trace the development of our language back from the present day 

 to a period antedating at any rate 1500 B. C. It is important to note 

 that, though the English of to-day bears only a faint resemblance to 

 the hypothetical reconstructed Indogermanic speech of say 1500 B. C. 

 or earher, there could never have been a moment from that time to 

 the present when the continuity of the language was broken. From 

 our present standpoint that bygone speech of 1500 B. C. was as much 

 English as it was Greek or Sanskrit. The history of the modern Eng- 

 lish words foot and its \^Kmil feet will illustrate both the vast differ- 

 ence between the two forms of speech at either end of the series and 

 the gradual character of the changes that have taken place withm 

 the series. Without here going into the actual evidence on which 

 the reconstructions are based, I shall merely list the various forms 

 which each word has had in the course of its history. Starting, then, 

 with foot— feet, and gradually going back in time, we have fut—^U, 

 fot—fet, fot—fetejot—fote, fdt—f6ti,fdt—fdti, fot—fotirjot—fotiz, 

 fot—fotis, fot— fates, fod—fodes, and finally pod—podes, beyond 



