[282] 
SOME 
LAWS. OF PHONETIC CHANGE 
IN THE KHITAN LANGUAGES. 
BY JOHN CAMPBELL, M.A. 
Professor in the Presbyterian College, Montreal. 
In several published articles, some of which were read before the 
Caradiin Institute, I have given comparative vocabularies illus- 
trating the connection of the American languages with those of the 
Old World. Among ethnologists there is a strong prejudice against 
this mode of procedure, a prejudice arising partly from an unwilling- 
ness to undertake the labour necessary for an appreciation of the 
results obtained; partly, it may be, from a suspicion that the 
vocabulist has been too anxious to prove his point to be scrupulous 
about the means; and, in particular, from the possibility or prob-' 
ability that the resemblances exhibited are nothing more than such 
chance coincidences as will appear more or less in comparing any 
two Janguages in the world. A similar prejudice might have 
opposed, and in many minds probably did for a time oppose, the 
reception of the Indo-European family of languages, for the resem- 
blances presented in their vocabularies as compared among them- 
selves are not a whit more striking than those which characterize a 
comparison of the languages of north-eastern Asia with those of the 
principal native races of North and South America. This, however, 
distinguishes the two linguistic fields ; the Indo-European is infinitely 
better known. Now, speaking of that field, Professor Max Miller 
tells us that, as far as etymological science is concerned, identity or 
similarity of sound or meaning is of no importance whatever. This, 
of course, is true when we are dealing with individual words, but to 
apply such a rule in the case of a general comparison of vocabularies 
would be to remove the foundation on which the classification of 
languages has been laid and frem which comparative etymology has 
sprung. As well go to the extreme at once, and, with Schleicher, 
