260 MENTAL EVOLUTION IN MAN. 



Such being the state of matters on the American conti- 

 nent (and also, though to a lesser extent, in the Southern 

 parts of the African), Dr. Hale suggests the following hypo- 

 thesis by way of explanation. To me it certainly appears a 

 plausible one, and if it should eventually be found to furnish 

 a key for unlocking the mysteries of language-growth in the 

 New World, it would obviously become available as a suffi- 

 cient explanation of radical diversities of language elsewhere. 



Starting from the facts which I have already quoted from 

 his paper at the close of my chapter on Articulation, he 

 argues that if children will thus spontaneously devise a 

 language of their own in a wholly arbitrary manner, even 

 when surrounded by the spoken language of a civilized 

 community, much more would children be likely to do this if 

 they should be accidentally separated from human society, 

 and thus thrown upon their own resources in an isolated 

 condition. Now, "if, under such circumstances, disease or the 

 casualties of a hunter's life should carry off the parents, the 

 survival of the children would, it is evident, depend mainly 

 upon the nature of the climate and the ease with which food 

 could be procured at all seasons of the year. In ancient 

 Europe, after the present climatical conditions were estab- 

 lished, it is doubtful if a family of children under ten years of 

 age could have lived through a single winter. We are not, 

 therefore, surprised to find that no more than four or five 

 linguistic stocks are represented in Europe, and that all of 

 them, except the Basque, are believed, on good evidence, to 

 have been of comparatively late introduction. Even the 

 Basque is traced by some, with much probability, to a source 

 in North Africa. Of Northern America, east of the Rocky 

 Mountains and north of the tropics, the same may be said. 

 The climate and the scarcity of food in winter forbid us to 

 suppose that a brood of orphan children could have survived, 

 except possibly, by a fortunate chance, in some favoured spot 

 on the shore of the Mexican Gulf, where shell-fish, berries, 

 and edible roots are abundant and easy of access. 



" But there is one region where Nature seems to offer her- 



