
QoL 
V.—Dissertation on a Peruvian Musical Instrument like the Syrinx of the 
Ancients. By Tuomas Stewart Trait, M.D., F.R.S.E., Professor of Medical 
Jurisprudence in the University of Edinburgh. 
(Read 1st April 1850.) 
The attention which has of late years been paid to the elucidation of the 
manners and arts of the ancient inhabitants of America, has been productive of 
the most convincing proofs of the communication between the Eastern and West- 
ern Continents at remote but unknown epochs. The learned and highly-interest- 
ing researches of Humpoxpt on the antiquities of the New World, have irresistibly 
led him to this conclusion, which has farther been strengthened by the researches 
of later travellers. The comparison of the idioms of the Asiatic and American 
tongues, has hitherto not afforded very direct proof; because the philologist has not 
yetbeen put in possession of a sufficient number of materials to make the comparison 
with advantage. Our ignorance of the languages and customs of Central Asia is a 
great bar to such studies, and needs not any other illustration than the fact that 
a highly-polished nation, with a literature and arts hitherto almost unknown in 
Europe, should have existed for ages in Central Asia. Our countryman, Dr 
GERARD, stimulated by the humane desire of extending the blessings of vaccina- 
tion to Thibet, has been for some time in that country, and has discovered in its 
language an Encyclopeedia in forty-four volumes, of which the medical part alone 
fills five volumes; and he finds, that the art of Lithography, so new in Europe, 
has been practised from time immemorial in Kinnaour, a principal city in Thibet, 
where he found it employed to display the anatomy of the human body. At- 
tempts have been made to supply such deficiencies in the knowledge of Asiatic 
languages, chiefly by the Germans; especially in the first volume of the Mithridates 
by ApELUNG, and in the Asia Polyglotta of Kuaprora. When our acquaintance 
with Central Asia shall be more extensive, and the American languages more 
studied, we may be able to trace the origin of the nations of that continent with 
greater success ; and Humpotpr does not think it impossible, that traces may yet 
be discovered in America of tongues and nations that have disappeared from the 
older hemisphere. It would be curious if future inquirers should discover in 
America vestiges of those torments of the philologist and antiquary, the Median, 
Oscan, Pheenician, and Hetruscan tongues. 
“ Tf language supply,” says Humoxpr, “ but feeble evidence of communica- 
tion between the two worlds, this communication is fully proved by the cosmo- 
VOL, XX. PART I. 2K 
