Biographical Sketch of Dr Ptichurd. 213 



same stock may be compared to the operations of horticultu- 

 rists who unite the branches of the same tree, or if they more 

 nearly resemble the anastomoses of bloodvessels, there are 

 instances in which languages receive isolated words from lan- 

 guages of the most distant and distinct groups, which may be 

 compared to the insertion of a graft from a totally different 

 tree, or to the still more remote connection which exists 

 between a parasitic plant and the tree to which it is attached. 

 A familiar example of such introduction is furnished in our 

 adoption of the word taboo from the South Sea Islanders. 

 Now, it is possible for many such additions to be made, and 

 indeed they have actually taken place in the opposite direction, 

 the Polynesian language being enriched by European words, 

 without any evidence being afforded of affinity between these 

 remote languages. Such accessions, however, become im- 

 portant Ethnological characteristics, affording, it may be, the 

 only recordsof the communications which have existed between 

 distinct people. The history of the widely spread Polynesian 

 race seems to admit of some such elucidation, from the traces 

 which have been left by such introduction of Asiatic words. 



It will be readily understood, that, by a man of Dr Prichard's 

 learning and strong predilection for linguistic study, the philo- 

 logical element of Ethnology would be by no means under- 

 rated. In two able Reports, which he presented to the British 

 Association for the Advancement of Science, he assigns to it 

 its ti'ue and important place. In the Report of 1832, he suc- 

 cessfully employed it as a corrective of classification founded 

 on external characters only, which had led even the great and 

 learned Cuvier to fall into palpable inaccuracies in his princi- 

 pal divisions of tlie human race. 



In 1838, Dr Prichard published an Analysis of the Egyptian 

 Mythology, which was a considerable extension of a former 

 work which he had published on the same subject, with a 

 critical examination of the remains of Egyptian Chronology. 

 This earlier treatise had arrested the attention of German an- 

 ti(juarians,and the distinguished Pi-ofessor A. W. von Schlegel 

 had published a translation of it, with a preliminary essay. I 

 am indebted to our associate, D. \V. Nash, a common friend 



