298 Dr R. G. Latham oh the 



be simply chronological, or it may be philological, properly so 

 called. 



The space of ten, twenty, a hundred, or a thousand j'ears, 

 is a strictly chronological epoch. The first fifty years after 

 the Norman conquest is an epoch in the history of the Eng- 

 lish language ; so is the reign of Henry the Third, or the 

 Protectorship of Oliver Cromwell. A definite period of this 

 sort is an epoch in language, just as the term of twenty or 

 thirty years is an epoch in the life of a man. 



On the other hand, a period that, chronologically speak- 

 ing, is indefinite, shall be an epoch. The interval between 

 one change and another, whether long or short, is an epoch. 

 The duration of English like the English of Chaucer, is an 

 epoch in the history of the English language ; and so is the 

 duration of English like the English of the Bible translation. 

 For such epochs there ai-e no fixed periods. With a lan- 

 guage that changes rapidly they are short ; with a language 

 that changes slowly they are long. 



Now, in which of these two meanings should the word be 

 used in ethnographical philology % The answer to the ques- 

 tion is supplied by the circumstances of the case, rather than 

 by any abstract propriety. We cannot give it the first mean- 

 ing, even if we wish to do so. To say in what year of the 

 duration of a common mother-tongue the Greek separated 

 from the stock that was common to it and to the Latin is an 

 impossibility ; indeed, if it could be answered at once, it would 

 be a question of simple history, not an inference from eth- 

 nology : since ethnology, with its pal?eontological reason- 

 ing from efi"ect to cause, speaks only where history, with its 

 direct testimony, is silent. 



We cannot, then, in ethnological reasoning get, at the pre- 

 cise year in which any one or two languages separated from 

 a common stock; so as to say that this separated so long be- 

 fore the other. 



The order, however, of separation we can get at, since we 

 can infer it from condition of the mother-tongue at the time 

 of such separation, this condition being denoted by the con- 

 dition of the derived language. 



Hence the philological epoch is an approximation to the 



