INDEFINITENESS OF PRIMITIVE LANGUAGE. 41 



crete objects and acts are expressible. The Australians 

 have a name for each kind of tree, but no name for tree 

 irrespective of kind. And though some witnesses allege 

 that their vocabulary is not absolutely destitute of generic 

 names, its extreme poverty in such is unquestionable. 

 Similarly with the Tasmanians. Dr. Milligan says they 

 &quot; had acquired very limited powers of abstraction or gen 

 eralization. They possessed no words representing ab 

 stract ideas ; for each variety of gum-tree and wattle-tree, 

 etc., etc., they had a name, but they had no equivalent for 

 the expression, a tree ; neither could they express ab 

 stract qualities, such as hard, soft, warm, cold, long, short, 

 round, etc. ; for hard, they would say like a stone, for 

 tall, they would say long legs, etc., and for round, 

 they said like a ball, like the moon, and so on, usually 

 suiting the action to the word, and confirming, by some 

 sign, the meaning to be understood.&quot; l Now, even mak 

 ing allowance for over-statement here (which seems need 

 ful, since the word &quot; long,&quot; said to be inexpressible in the 

 abstract, subsequently occurs as qualifying a concrete in 

 the expression, &quot;long legs&quot;), it is sufficiently manifest 

 that so imperfect a language must fail to convey the idea 

 of a name, as something separate from a thing ; ana that 

 still less can it be capable of indicating the act of naming. 

 Familiar use of such partially abstract words as are appli 

 cable to all objects of a class, is needful before there can 

 be reached the conception of a name a word symbolizing 

 the symbolic character of other words ; and the conception 

 of a name, with its answering abstract term, must be long 

 current before the verb to name can arise. Hence, among 

 tribes with speech so rude, it will be impossible to trans 

 mit the tradition of an ancestor named the Wolf, as dis 

 tinguished from the actual wolf. The children and grand- 



i Proc. Royal Soc. Tasmania, iii., p. 280. 



