364 Darwinian and Other Essays. 



some who can deal with any Romanic or Teutonic 

 language, though more or less advice is usually 

 needed for this. But all languages east of the 

 Roman - German boundary require the eye of a 

 practised linguist. To decipher a title, or part of 

 a preface, in a strange language, it is necessary 

 that one should understand the character in which 

 it is printed, and should be able to consult some 

 dictionary either of the language in question or of 

 some closely related dialect. One day I had to 

 catalogue a book of Croatian ballads, and, not 

 finding any Croatian dictionary in the library, set 

 up a cross-fire on it with the help of a Serbian and 

 a Slovenian dictionary. This served the purpose 

 admirably, for where a cognate word did not hap- 

 pen to occur in the one language it was pretty 

 sure to turn up in the other. Sometimes in the 

 case, say, of a hundred Finnish pamphlets the 

 labour is greater than it is worth while to under- 

 take; or somebody may give us a volume in 

 Chinese or Tamil, which is practically undeci- 

 pherable. In such cases we consider discretion 

 the better part of valour, and under the heading 

 u FINNISH " or " CHINESE " write " One hundred 

 Finnish pamphlets," or "A Chinese book," trust- 

 ing to the future for better information. Some- 

 times a polyglot visitor from Asia happens in, and 



