1891-92]. DENE ROOTS. 145 
DENE ROOTS. 
BY THE REV. FATHER A. G. MORICE, O.M.I. 
(Read 21st November, 1891.) 
I.—INTRODUCTION. 
Comparative Philology considered as a distinct science cannot boast of 
a very ancient origin. As late as a hundred years ago, it was still in its 
infancy. Of course the study of languages for the sake of philological 
deductions had been prosecuted long before with varying success. As 
far back as A.D. 1563, Pigafetta, the naive chronicler of Magellan’s 
‘discoveries, enriched his narrative with three vocabularies of foreign 
tongues*, and his example was followed by some later navigators. Mis- 
sionaries also walked in his footsteps, though they generally paid more 
attention to texts than to words, some of them concentrating their efforts 
towards the collecting of the Lord’s Prayer in as many languages as 
possible. Yet it is to Leibnitz that we must look for the first author of 
repute who applied himself to the systematic study of foreign tongues 
with a view of deducing therefrom ethnological conclusions. “Je 
trouve,” he says in a letter to Father Verjus,f “ que rien ne sert d’'avantage 
a juger.des connexions des peuples que les langues. Par exemple, la 
langue des Abyssins nous fait connaitre qu’ils sont une colonie d’ Arabes.” 
Lacrozet and Reland,§ his followers in the same scientific field, pursued 
their studies animated by a like spirit and reached similar conclusions. 
However, it was not until the reign of Catherine II. of Russia that 
Comparative Philology began to assume a separate and concrete 
form. That monarch drew out a list of one hundred Russian words and 
had them translated in as many languages as possible. She soon 
discovered unexpected affinities, and with her own hand drew up com- 
parative tables.. About the same time, Dom Pezron, a learned Bene- 
dictine, showed by numerous examples that many words of the Greek 
language have a Celtic origin. “Vous serez surpris,’ he wrote to a 
friend,” “quand je vous dirai que j’ai environ sept ou huit cents mots 
* Navigationi e Viaggi raccolti gia M. Gio. Bat. Ramusio, Ven. 1563. 
+G. Leibuitii opera omnia, edit. Dut. Vol. vi., Part 11, p. 227. 
+Commerc. Epistol. tom Il., p. 79, Leips. 1742. 
§ Ubi supra, p. 78. 
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