140 REPORT—1850. 
fasciculi sent off from a segment to the several accosting myisks ; with every innermost 
fasciculus of these organs a myisk begins, to end at the seventh rib anterior, at the 
outer side of the muscle, crossing the ribs in an oblique line, and receiving a fasci- 
culus from every one. 
ETHNOLOGY. 
On the Language and Mode of Writing of the Ancient Assyrians. 
By the Rev. Dr. Epwarp Hincks. 
Mucu interesting ethnological information has been already obtained from the 
Assyrian inscriptions that have been brought to light ; and more may be confidently 
expected, as these inscriptions shall be more perfectly deciphered, and as new in- 
scriptions shall be discovered. Apart, however, from all such information, the lan- 
guage and the mode of writing of the Assyrians are themselves two important ethno- 
logical facts. The language of the Assyrio-Babylonian inscriptions is generally 
admitted to be of the family called Semitic. It is in many respects strikingly like 
the Hebrew; but has some peculiarities, which were mentioned, in common with 
the Egyptian, the relationship of which to the Semitic languages has been already 
recognized. The mode of writing of the Assyrians differed from that of the Hebrew 
and all other Semitic languages, and agreed with the Egyptian, in that it was partly 
ideographic. Some words consisted entirely of ideographs ; others were written in 
part phonetically, but had ideographs united with the phonetic part. As to the part 
of the writing which consisted of phonographs, Dr. Hincks maintained, in opposition 
to all other writers, that the characters had all definite syllabic values ; there being no 
consonants, and consequently no necessity or liberty of supplying vowels. In proof 
that the characters had definite syllabic values, he handed about copies of a litho- 
graphed plate*, in which examples of various forms of words analogous to those ex- 
isting in Hebrew were collected together. This use of characters representing sylla- 
bles he considered to be an indication that, though the language of the Assyrians 
was Semitic, their mode of writing was not so. A second proof of the same position 
he derived from the absence of distinct syllables to represent combinations of the 
peculiar Semitic consonants Koph and Ain. From these facts he inferred that the 
Assyrio-Babylonian mode of writing was adopted from some Indo-European nation, 
which had probably conquered Assyria; and he thought it likely that this nation 
had intercourse with the Egyptians, and had, in part at least, derived its mode of 
writing from that most ancient people. 
On the Sicilian and Sardinian Languages. By Joun Hoce, M.A., F.RS., 
Hon. Secretary of the Royal Geographical Society. 
The author, during a tour in Sicily, collected many words as spoken by the com- 
mon people, and compared them with the corresponding Italian ones. Some of 
these he inserted in the present paper with specimens of Sicilian poetry. The proxi- 
mity of Sicily and Sardinia, and their having been under the successive dominion of 
the like ruling powers, led the author, when in Sicily, to conclude that much re- 
semblance existed between the languages of those islands: but he had not at that 
time any data of sufficient consequence to establish such a conclusion. 
Mr. John Hogg considered that the ‘“ modern Sicilian’’ dialect, which some au- 
thors suppose to be the nearest to the Neapolitan and Calabrian dialects of the 
Italian, is in reality very dissimilar from them, and he then pointed out the chief 
differences. 
The three principal dialects of the Sicilian were classed under these periods :— 
The first, from the eighth to the eleventh centuryt of the Christian xra, wherein 
* See copy of this in Plate IV. 
+ The times specified in these divisions are to be taken as nearly fixing the respective 
periods; but they will be found sufficiently exact for general purposes, 
