162 PROCEEDINGS OF THE CANADIAN INSTITUTE. 
is attested by the Corean signs for ts, dz, which are combinations of 
kands. Such then is the meagre Etruscan syllabary, and such its 
derivation. I might, perhaps, have gained more attention and credit 
for its decipherment, had I, as might easily be done, left the distant 
Aztec out of sight. This, however, would have been to, sacrifice, to 
a dogmatic dictum of “antecedent improbability,” common gratitude. 
love of truth, and really scientific principle. Everything is anteced- 
ently improbable in the region of the unsolved, otherwise the un- 
solved would not exist. 
To the names of those already mentioned who have materially 
aided me in the work of decipherment, I should add my acknowledg- 
ments to W. Harry Rylands, Esq., Secretary of the Society of 
Biblical Archeology ; M. Léon de Rosny, President of the Institution 
Ethnographique of Paris; W. H. Vander Smissen, Esq., Librarian 
of the University of Toronto ; Hyde Clarke, Esq., Vice-President of 
the Anthropological Institute; the Rev. George Coull, A.M.; my 
colleague, the Rev. Professor Coussirat; and last, but not least, to 
J. C. Robertson, Esy , B.A., Classical Fellow in University College, 
Toronto, for his kind care in revising the proof-sheets of this paper. 
THE ETRUSCAN SEPULCHRAL INSCRIPTIONS. 
The Rey. Isaac Taylor and other Etruscologists, while failing to 
translate these inscriptions, have made some good guesses. Such are 
their suppositions that the characters they have read ISA denote a 
wife, those read SEC, a daughter, and those read AL, a child. If, 
according to their own method, they had read SA, EC, and NAL, 
they would have been more correct. The first is nare or anre, wife ; 
the second nechi, now nesca, daughter ; and the third karasa, or in 
modern Basque, sortze, natus.”” Other terms of relationship are uta 
and babe father, and wga or uga anre mother or lady mother, some- 
87 It has been objected that karasa and sortze are difficult to recoucile. That NAL, karasa 
means “‘ natus,” several bilinguals attest. The Basque ‘‘natus” is sortze. The only difficulty 
in the word is the replacement of ka by so after an interval of over a thousand years in the 
history of the language. See Van Eys, Dictionnaire Basque-Francais, Introduction, p. XLIII. 
Tableau des permutations des consonnes dans les mots basques de différents dialectes. 
K=S, Z, Ch. Karamitcha = zaramika ; kirten = zirtoin; kiskaldu = chichkaldu ; gale = zale ; 
gapar = zapar; itogin =itozin. For change of vowel see in the same dictionary, khurruka, 
khurulla derived from karraka ; garratz = kirats, kharax ; galde = galdo ; marruskatu = mur- 
ruskatu ; salhutzea = zaulitzea ; chokon = zokon; elkar = elkor; etzin = etzan; ala, halatan 
=hola, holatan. The Japanese equivalent of the Basque sortze is haramu. One class of 
Japanese verbs derived from nouns is formed by adding mu to the noun; thus from hara, belly 
comes hara-mu to be with child. In the same way but witha different verb-former tu, tzen, 
on = 
