222 DOCTRINE OF EVOLUTION 



tuguese, and French languages, they reveal the same 

 general structure in thousands of their words, — a 

 common basis which in these cases is due to their 

 derivation from the same ancestor, the Latin tongue. 

 The Latin word for star is stella, and the Italian word 

 of to-day is an identical and unchanged descendant, 

 like a persistent type of shark which lives now in prac- 

 tically the same form as did its ancestor in the coal 

 ages. The Spanish word is estrella, a modified deriva- 

 tive, but still one that bears in its structure the marks 

 of its Latin origin; the French word etoile is a still 

 more altered product of word evolution. Even in the 

 German stern, Norse stjern, Danish starn, and English 

 star we may recognize mutual affinities and common 

 ancestral structure. Choosing illustrations from a dif- 

 ferent group, the Hebrew salutation "Peace be with 

 you," Shalom lachem, proves to be a blood cousin of 

 the Arabic Salaam alaikum, indicating the common 

 ancestry of these diverse languages. Among Polynesian 

 peoples the Tahitian calls a house a fare, the Maori of 

 New Zealand uses whare, while the Hawaiian employs 

 the word hale, and the Samoan, fate. Whenever we 

 classify and compare human languages, we find similar 

 consistent anatomical evidences of their relationships 

 and evolution. We can even discern counterparts of 

 the vestigial structures like the rudimentary limbs of 

 whales. In the English word night certain letters do 

 not function vocally, though in the German counterpart 

 Nacht their correspondents still play a part. In the 

 word dough as correctly pronounced the final letters 

 are similarly vestigial, although in the phonetic relative 

 tough they are still sounded. 



