1b4 PROCEEDINGS OF THE CANADIAN INSTITUTE. 
foremost among northern migrating peoples. To the same race the 
Etruscans belonged. ! 
The threefold Tyrseni, Tuscer, Naharcer, Japuscer, carry us back 
to Mesopotamia, the land of the Nairi or Naharina, and to the 
included region of Khupuscai, as well as forward to Navarre and 
Guipuzcoa. The former even take us to this continent, where the 
Aztecs or Citin also called themselves and their tongue Nahuatl 
or Navatl. Who the Tuscer were, it is harder to say, for the final 
er is a termination; otherwise the great Basque name Euskara 
would at once suggest itself in such a form as the Dioscurias of 
Colchis, now Iskurieh, near which Chapsoukes or modern Khupus- 
‘wfains and eastern Guipuzcoans dwell. In the East, Hamath is more 
prominent than the Mesopotamian Hittite names, whether we view 
it in the Himalayas, the Emodi montes of antiquity, or in Yamato, 
the mountain door, or native name of Japan.”' It is possible, there- 
fore, that radical differences in grammatical construction, resulting 
from independent culture and environment, may have characterized 
two distinct branches of the Hittite family prior to their great 
migrations, which began in the seventh century before Christ. 
Certain it is that the auxiliary forms of the Ibero-Etruscan inscrip- 
tions are not those of the Hittites in Asia. 
Of the Etruscan words furnished by classical authors, many at 
once reveal their Basque character. Lar or Lars, as in Lars Por- 
senna, 1s the Basque Jarri, great. Lucumo is, as the Cippus of 
Perusia reveals, al auka ma, composed of al power, auka choice, and 
ema give, denoting an elected potentate. Varro informs us that 
atrium, the fore-door or porch, was an Etruscan word. It is the 
Basque athari, a porch. Hesychius gives damnus a horse, which in 
modern Basque is zamari ; ataison, a vine, not so easily recognizable 
in ardanza ; aracos, a hawk, which is probably arrano, the eagle ; 
faiae, mountains, which is pilla,a mound. Festus furnishes nepos, 
luxurious, in which we may detect the Basque napur, a glutton ; 
buris, the ploughtail, which is either burw, the head, or burdax, the 
extremity ; swhulo, a flute-player, which exhibits the same form as 
21 It has been suggested to me that too much is made of what may be a mere accidental 
similarity of name. It must be remembered, however, that the theory of chances is against 
the constant repetition of several names in a series; that the names appear in connection with 
cognate languages, modes of writing, and other confirmatory connections. To build any 
theory, which [ have no desire to do in any case, upon verbal resemblances alone would be as 
unwise as it would be to overlook them in an inductive process for ascertaining fact. 
