34 
The origin of articulate speech among the speechless race of the 
river drift epoch, Dr. Hale attributes to some such child genius with an 
abnormal faculty for its development. The diversity of root stocks, of 
which the greater part occur in the Western World, he thinks may be 
accounted for by the wandevings of single pairs from primitive com- 
munities at a period when the population was scanty, and their 
complete isolation would be secured in those primeval wilds. The 
subsequent early death of both pare .s, by some accident of the chase 
or otherwise, left their young children alone to develop a Iznguage of 
their own, and invent their own mythology. It is a noteworthy fact, 
according to Major Powell, that, asa rule, the myths are distinct in 
each linguistic family. The elder children might 1etain a recollection 
of some of the words of the parental language, and this would 
account for the actual identity of certain words in languages 
belonging to widely separated families, otherwise totally un- 
related. This may be a perfectly accidental coincidence. naturally 
resulting from the comparatively small number of possible aviicula- 
tions. Such youvg children, Dr Hale admits, could only survive 
in an equable climate, where food was easily procurable all the 
year round, like that of California. The fact that 19 distinct 
stocks occur there, and many more in the mild regions of Brazil, 
is certainly in favour of his hypothesis of the origin of the diverse 
linguistic stocks whence varying dialects radiated in all diveciions with 
the rapidity characteristic of the uncivilised regions of all parts of the 
world. Blood feuds and intertribal wars are frequent, and divide a 
tribe into separate portions. If they hold no future intercourse, in a 
few years neither section could understand the other. The varied and 
numerous meanings given to—one word on tbe one hand, and the 
frequent application of the same sound for ideas of the opposite 
significance on the other—both pre-eminently characteristic of the 
early life of Janguage—materially assist this process of variation, and 
tend to promote the adoption of different meanings for the same idea 
by the different tribal sections. Multiply this process indefinitely, and 
we easily attain to the contemporaneous existence of innumerable 
divergent tongues, as on the American continent, which yield the 
philologist to-day more than four hundred distinct native Janguages at 
present affiliated to 150 different root-stocks. The same condition 
characterises Polynesia, Melanesia, Australia, and Africi. The traveller 
meets with a fresh tribal dialect every hundred miles or so in Mongolia 
and Thibet. Numerous divergent tongues are spoken by the primitive 
non-Aryan population of Southern India, known to pbilologists as the 
Dravidian race. Some of these, Tamil, for instance, are of a highly 
polished character, and like the “clear sounding” Nabuatl of ancient 
Mexico and the Bantu of South Africa, have independently attained a 
measure of perfection on different lines of evolution. 
The progress of civilization, however, tends io reduce the number 
of dialects. When one community becomes more powerful or highly 
civilised than its neighbours, it enforces its own lauguage on the sub- 
ordinated tribes, which become iis tributary allies in war. Thus 
Nahuatl was understood by numerous tribes of tbe Nahuat} confederacy. 
Similar conditions prevailed among the six nations of the Iroquois in 
