CHAP, ix.] THE WITNESS OF LANGUAGE. 333 



French Basque dialects are not descended from any of 

 those of Aquitania, since their speakers first entered 

 France after the fall of the Eoman Empire, but they 

 would be later descendants of some cognate dialect or 

 dialects. Basque is the sole survivor of what may be 

 called the Iberian family of speech, which was displaced 

 by the Keltic invaders. It is useless to seek for traces 

 of Basque words in local names, whether in France or 

 elsewhere. Basque is too modern to allow us to know 

 the forms of its words even a thousand years ago, while 

 nothing is so soon corrupted as a proper name. Hum- 

 boldt's attempt to explain local names in Western Europe 

 by means of modern Basque is necessarily a failure. 

 Until the Keltic vocabulary has been thoroughly ex- 

 amined, and its non-Aryan residuum made out, it is 

 impossible to compare it with those Basque roots which 

 have been extracted from a comparison of the Basque 

 dialects/' 1 



I have every reason to believe that " the dissolving 

 action of time/' as Dr. Broca happily calls it, has 

 obliterated the non- Aryan tongue, which may reason- 

 ably be believed to have been formerly spoken by the 

 Neolithic aborigines of Britain. We have too many 

 instances, writes Mr. Freeman, in "recorded history of 

 nations laying aside the use of one language and taking 

 to the use of another, for any one who cares for accuracy 

 to set down language as any sure test of race. In fact 

 the studies of the philologer, and those of the ethnologist 

 strictly so called, are quite distinct, and deal with two 

 different sets of phenomena/' 2 Even if then we assume 



1 Journ. Anthrop. Inst., voL v. Part I., p. 26. 



2 Contemporary Review, " Kace and Language," March 1877. On this 

 question see also Journal of Anthrop. Inst., v. i. pp. 1-29. 



