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tural or plausible. One method of confirmation he uses, is, 
to trace the assigned roots through several languages and 
regions. ‘Thus he traces one of them—iodh-ar, ith-ar— 
through vitrum,—«arrirepoc,—margarita—Eridanus—iohar, 
(borrowed he says by the Arabians from the Pheenicians)— 
Farsidh (Persia), and the names of some of the islands in the 
Persian Gulf. He traces zdh-on, iodh-on, the roots of Sidon, 
through Chalcedon, Carchedon, Caledonia, and the Germanic 
aidstein, whereby he exhibits the meaning of those names 
also. He traces the roots of Solyma through the region 
inhabited by the Solymi of Homer, the Sulmo of Italy, and 
the Saluvii of Gaul, and shows from the accounts concerning 
those places, that the roots are equally applicable to them. 
The roots of the Hebrew borrowed word glinnim he traces — 
through Germany, ancient Britain, Campania, and Liguria. 
Another mode of confirmation he uses is the quotation of, 
or reference to, various ancient and modern writers, in proof 
of the applicability of the terms. 
He does not infer from this similarity of language, that 
the Irish are descended from a colony of Phoenicians, led— 
not from Tyre or Sidon, or any part of Syria, but—from the 
shores of the Red Sea, as Irish histories tellus ; the greater 
part of which histories he imagines to be a tissue of fables, 
the rather, as they are at variance with the only authentic 
document relating to ancient Ireland, namely, the geography 
of Ptolemy. The conclusion he comes to is, that they had a 
common origin—that there was an ancient language diffused 
over almost the whole of Europe, and a good part of Asia; a 
sort of Pelasgic, which is the chief root of the Greek and 
Latin, and of most of the modern European languages; and 
that this ancient language is preserved in greater purity in 
Treland than in any other country, on account of its insulated 
position. He shows that Leibnitz, a man of great sagacity 
and philological knowlege, made an observation not very 
dissimilar to this. ‘Illud autem notatu dignissimum, per 
