204 MAJOR C. Ra CONDER, RB E.,) D.C ii., LD.) MeReA Ses 
the Kaffres, when the absence of springs and streams separates 
the various settlements by great distances, the change in 
pronunciation is sometimes so rapid that, in the third or fourth 
generation, the members of an isolated group become unable 
to understand the speech of the parent tribe; and when we 
consider the lapse of many centuries, it may well seem 
impossible that the original words of such languages should 
be recoverable, even by the aid of a wide, comparative study. 
We are often told that the condition of primitive man is best 
illustrated by the study of the modern savage races ot 
Africa and of America. Yet it seems to be in these cases 
assumed that those whom we now know as savages can never 
hive existed in any other state, and this although, on the 
discovery of America, existing civilisations were encountered, 
which have since been destroyed, and traces of old past 
civilisations (including literature and monumental writing) 
in Central America, which had then already perished, leaving 
only the great ruins of former cities. Even in Africa, when 
it is considered that physical and other characteristics have 
been shown, by men of science, to connect the wild Bushman 
(distinguished for his love of drawing and power of dramatic 
imitation) with the ancient civilised Egyptian, we may weil 
pause before concluding that the ancestors of the bush- 
men were as wild and uncultivated as are their present 
descendants. 
It is not, then, among modern savages that we can expect 
to find, in recognisable condition, the original languages of 
the world. But if scholars be correct in classing the 
languages of America with the Turanian family of speech 
in Asia, and in suggesting an ultimate connection between 
Semitic and African speech, the latter (as regards Kaffre 
languages at least) being also connected with that of 
Australia, it would follow that in considering the most 
ancient languages of Asia, we are able to get at the very 
foundations of the speech of man as a whole.* The present 
* The Mongolic character of Japanese is shown clearly by W. G. Aston 
(“Grammar of Japanese.” Triibner, 1877). The American languages are 
classed as Turanian with the Euskaric and Esquimaux. They show the 
ordinary peculiarities of this family—agglutination, the use of post- 
positions, absence of gender, and formation of the verb by auxiliaries. 
The Berber languages show connection with Egyptian and Coptic in 
structure and in the pronouns. The Caucasian dialects, though much 
mixed and decayed, show inflection, and the case suffixes of Aryan speech. 
The languages of Melanesia are connected with the speech of the southern 
