162 PROCEEDINGS OF THE CANADIAN INSTITUTE. 
tain aconsiderable proportion of Aztec words, and that in them, as in 
the Nahuatl of Nicaragua, the Aztec é/ disappears or is converted into 
t, d, k, s,r orl. UHere therefore it is claimed by others is an argu- 
ment for the northern derivation of the Mexicans. 
If we carry forward the work of comparison, having regard to cer- 
tain laws of phonetic change, we shall find, as I profess to have done, 
that the vocabulary, and to a large extent the grammar, of the Aztecs 
are those of all the greater families in point of culture and warlike 
character of the Northern and Southern Continents. Nor do the 
Aztec and its related American languages form a family by them- 
selves. They have their counterparts, as I have indicated, in many 
regions of the Old. World. If my classification of these languages 
be just, there should, among a thousand other subjects of interest, be 
found some explanation of the great peculiarity of Aztec speech to 
which I have referred. 
The Aztec combination ¢/ appears, although to ne very great ex- 
tent, in the Koriak, Tchuktchi, and Kamtchatdale dialects. It has 
no place in Corean, Japanese, or Aino, and only isolated instances of 
its use are found in the Yukahirian and Yeniseian languages. Of 
the four Caucasian tongues which pertain to the Khitan family, two, 
the Georgian, and Mizjeji, are almost as destitute of such a sound as 
the Corean and Japanese ; while the Circassian and Lesghian vocabu- 
laries, by their frequent employment of #, reproduce in great measure 
the characteristic feature of the Nahuatl. It is altogether wanting 
in the Basque, and is a combination foreign to the genius of that 
language. Yet there is no simpler task in comparative philology 
than to show the radical unity of the Basque and Lesghian forms of 
speech. Such a comparison, as well as one of the Lesghian dialects 
among themselves and with the other Caucasian languages, will en- 
able us to decide whether the ¢ of the Lesghian and Circassian forms 
part of an original phonetic system, or is an expedient, naturally 
adopted by speakers whose relaxed vocal organs made some other 
sound difficult or impossible, to stave off the process of phonetic decay 
by substituting for such sound the nearest equivalent of which they 
were capable. 
In order first of all to exhibit the common origin of the Basque 
and the Lesghian, I submit the following comparison of forms, the 
relations of which are apparent to the most casual observer. The 
Lesghian vocabulary is that of Klaproth, contained in his Asia Poly- 
