INTRODUCTION. 77 



to the south of the great mountain range of Middle 

 Asia. 



^In the natural history of the horse, lately pub- 

 lished, there is an opinion expressed, contrary to 

 the conclusion of others, that the species is of Afri- 

 can origin. With a view, therefore, of instituting 

 some inquiry into the primitive habitat and period 

 of domestication of the horse, by a philological 

 research concerning the names bestowed upon ani- 

 mals of that family in the most ancient known 

 languages, we find in the Hebrew, the oldest criti-. 

 cally studied tongue of the Semitic branch, a variety 

 of terms applied to Equidae, some of which in our 

 biblical version seem to be occasionally translated 

 with questionable accuracy, or are more generical 

 than specific, and there are others whose radical 

 Hebrew origin maybe doubted* Aware how vague 

 and inconclusive studies of this kind are deemed to 

 be by many persons of erudition, and how open 

 they are to abuse in themselves, still, to one whose 

 attention has been long and repeatedly called to 

 linguisitics, and who in his inquiries into the origin 

 of the older nations of history and of the West has 

 met with numerous relations between the remotest 

 times and the present, between the most ancient 

 languages and those of the older dialects spoken in 

 Europe, the affinities are often so obtrusive, that the 

 result may be worth noticing in an abstract form 

 and confined to the object we have immediately 

 before us. We find, for example, the name of the 

 ass, "Pllf, orud, if it be onomatopoeically an imita- 



