52 COMPARATIVE LANGUAGE 



as the restriction of the inherited words for father-in-law and mother- 

 in-law to the parents of the husband? It is idle to discuss whether 

 the study of Indo-European antiquities is a branch of linguistic 

 science to which prehistoric archaeology is auxiliary, or vice versa. 

 For the relative importance of each kind of evidence will vary accord- 

 ing to the individual problem. It is only by the recognition of the 

 claims of each, by the conservative employment of evidence from 

 whatever source, that this branch of investigation can attain its 

 highest development, and even then we must content ourselves 

 with what is only a fragmentary picture at best. 



I have now mentioned, not indeed all branches of science which 

 could be adduced as standing in some sort of relation to comparative 

 grammar, but those which seem to me to stand in the closest relation- 

 ship to it, a relationship which is not merely theoretical but a vital 

 fact, the importance of which to each science concerned has never 

 been so fully recognized as at the present day. 



