KNOWLEDGE. 



[November 1, 1889. 



With regard to other members of the Aryan family, the 

 names for tlie beech, Imki/ in old Slavonic, Imkax in Lithua- 

 nian, and liiili- in Eussian, are manifestly loan words from 

 the German. Tliis would i,'o to prove that the Slaves, in 

 the prehistoric period, must have dwelt east of the beech 

 line, though they have since advanced witliin it. Joharmes 

 Schmidt has shown reason for beUeving in the mibroken 

 geograi^liical continuity of the European Aryans, pre^^ous 

 to the linguistic separation. Hence they must be placed 

 astride, so to speak, of the beech line — the Slaves and 

 Lithuanians in European Russia, and the Celts, Latins, 

 Hellenes and Teutons farther to the west. 



\\'e have now to accoimt for the fact that the word 

 denoting the beech in Latin, German, and Celtic, has come 

 in Greek to denote not the beech but the oak. A well- 

 knowTi explanation of the difficulty has been oii'ered by 

 Professor Max Miiller in the second series of his lectures. 

 He contends that the word originally denoted the oak, but 

 that it was transferred to the beech at the time when the 

 oak forests of -Jutland were replaced by beech forests. But 

 this does not account for the fact that the Latin word 

 /(iflu.s means the beech, for Helbig has shown that the 

 Umbrians had already reached Italy before the commence- 

 ment of the age of bronze. The bronze age began in Italy 

 earlier than in Denmark, and in the bronze age the oak 

 was still the prevailing tree in Denmark, and was quite 

 imknown in the neolithic age, when the Umbrians, whose 

 language was a dialect of Latin, were already settled in 

 Italy. The word ./'«.'/«•<, therefore, must have denoted the 

 beech in Latin at a period prior to the change in the forest 

 growth to which Professor Max Miiller attributes the 

 alteration in the meaning of the word. 



Moreover, a gi'eat change in the vegetation of a country, 

 such as the replacement of the Danish oak forests by 

 forests of beech, must have occupied many centuries. At 

 what moment, then, was the name transferred from one 

 tree to the other ? Were the people of Denmark content 

 to have no name for the beech when it first appeared, and 

 what did they call the oak after ha\dng deprived it of its 

 original title, in the prolonged period during which the 

 two trees must have been growing side by side ? 



Another hypothesis, less beset with difficulties, has been 

 advanced by Geiger and Pick, who suppose that the word 

 originally signified the beech, and received among the 

 Greeks the changed signification of the oak. If the Greeks 

 had migrated from a land of beeches to a land of oaks 

 there is no difficulty in miderstandiiig that they may have 

 transferred the name of one tree to the other. The word, 

 meaning the food-tree (^ay Iv, to eat), would be as appli- 

 cable to the evergreen oak, with its acorns, as to the beech, 

 the mast of which was the staple food for their swine. 

 The beech, as has been said, is not found south of Dodona, 

 which lies in the centre of Epirus. It is noticeable that 

 the most ancient Greek legends are connected with 

 Dodona, where the Greeks made their first halt in their 

 progi-ess to the south, and where the earliest prophetic 

 utterances were obtained fi-om the rustling of the leaves 

 of the sacred tree — the (j>r]y6^. Hence we may beheve 

 that the Greeks entered the peninsula, not fi'om Asia 

 Minor, but from the north - west, through the valleys 

 of Epirus. This route would explain how the old Aryan 

 word denoting the beech came to be applied by the immi- 

 grants to designate the tree wliich ilourished "on the hUl 

 slopes of their new territory. In modern times we have 

 similar instances of transferred names in the United States, 

 where such English names as the robin, the hemlock, and 

 the maple are used to denote wholly dilierent species. 



But with regard to the Greeks, it may be m-ged that before 

 they entered the peninsula they must have been already 



acqua'iited with the deciduous oak, which flourishes in the 

 region whence they emigrated. This objection is met by 

 the fact that the Greeks liad a second name for the oak, 

 Spus, which corresponds to the old Irish ihnir oak. as well 

 as to the Gothic tihi, and the Sanskrit ilni which mean 

 simply a tree, lioth of the Cireek words for the oak are 

 used by Sophocles in speaking of the sacred oak at 

 Dodona. 



The Greek word for the deciduous oak agi-ees with the 

 Celtic word, while the Greek word for the evergi'een oak 

 was the word which in their former home had denoted the 

 beech. 



The question as to whether the original Aryan word 

 denoted the beech or the oak is not unimportant, as from 

 it may be drawn an inference as to the primitive seat of 

 the Aryan race. 



According to Professor Max Miiller, the Aryans migrated 

 from Central Asia, where the beech is unknown. If this 

 had been the case it is extremely difficult to explain how the 

 ancestors of the Latins, Celts and Teutons, migrating, as 

 Pictet mamtains, at different times and by different routes, 

 to lands where the beech abounds, should all have chanced 

 to call it by the same primitive name ; merely modified 

 according to the fundamental phonetic laws of Latin and 

 German, But, on the other hand, all such difficulties 

 disappear if we assume that the cradle of the Aryans was 

 in the original beech region ; that is, roughly speaking, in 

 the valleys of the Rliiae, the Main, and the Danube ; and 

 that it was here that the differentiation of the Greek, 

 Latin, Celtic, and German languages took place. 



The name of the beech bears also on the solution of the 

 question as to which of the neolithic races has the best 

 claim to represent the primitive Aryans. The choice 

 probably hes between the brachy-cephalic Celto-Latin race, 

 some of whose earliest settlements may be discovered in 

 the pile dwelhngs of Bavaria. Switzerland, and Northern 

 Italy, and the dolichocephalic Scandinavian race, whose 

 remains are found in the Danish kitchen middens. That 

 one of these races constituted the primitive Aryan race and 

 imposed its language on the other, is liighly probable. 



Now, as we have already seen, in the neolitliic age the 

 beech had not yet reached Denmark, the lir being at that 

 time the predominant tree. In the bronze age the fir was 

 succeeded by the oak, which gave place in the iron period 

 to the beech. Hence the beech region v,as at that time 

 inhabited by the Celto-Latin people, wliilo the Scandinavian 

 race in all probability dwelt to the north of its limit. 



The beech has therefore a threefold ethnological signi- 

 ficance. 



(1 ) It proves that the Greeks entered Hellas fi-om the 

 North, probably through Epirus, and not, as has been 

 contended, from Asia Minor. 



(2) It proves that the differentiation of the Aryan 

 languages took place not in Asia, but in Central Em'ope, 

 on either side of the beech Une ; the Slaves and Lithuanians 

 being to the east of it, the Greeks, Celts, and Latins farther 

 to the west 



(3) It makes it probable that the primitive Aryans 

 belonged to the brachy-cephaUc Celto-Latin race, and not 

 the dolicho-cephalic Scandinavians. 



DRAWINGS OF THE MILKY WAY. 



WE have been requested to state that some large 

 detailed drawings of the Milky Way, made 

 at Parsonstown by the Earl of Rosse's 

 assistant. Dr. Otto Boeddicker, are at pres.nt 

 on view at the rooms of the Royal Astro- 

 nomical Society, Bm-lington House, and that an explana- 



