ON THE COMPARISON OF ASIATIC LANGUAGES. 225 
names for a flora and fauna are only valuable as regards 
positive results: the negative results cast little light on the 
subject, because in the course of migration the names of 
beasts, birds, and trees (once well known to their ancestors), 
may have been forgotten, in lands where they were not 
found, or transferred, as we know to have been the case to 
other animals in the new home. A curious instance of such 
renaming occurs in the case of the Boers in Africa, whose 
ideas were very limited and founded on second-hand nines 
tion. Thus they called the giraffe “the camel,” and the 
jackal, “the wolf,” and the leopard “the tiger,” in countries 
where neither camels, tigers, nor wolves really existed, while 
for the gnu they could find no name appropriate, and conse- 
quently called it only “the wild beast.” 
In this connection it is worth noticing also that the 
original distinction of various animals is very imperfect. 
Those which are useful to man, or those which are conspicuous 
or dangerous, are the first to be named; but many which 
interest the educated student are overlooked by the ig- 
norant. Thus in Syria I found it almost impossible to 
collect the names of any of the smaller song birds, no agree- 
ment existing among my informants. Only a very few kinds 
of fish are distinguished, and plants and flowers are often 
unnoticed. The names for ox, sheep, camel, and other 
important animals are, on the other hand, remarkably 
numerous and distinctive. 
Turning from such questions to consider the simple roots 
consisting of one consonant and one vowel, which run 
through all the Asiatic languages, and from which it would 
seem probable that the second and third classes of roots are 
built up, we find that they are easily arranged in seven 
classes, according as they refer to the sensations connected 
with various organs, Ist, life or breathing with the nose; 2nd, 
light, sight, and fire, with the eye; 3rd, sound, with ear; 4th, 
movement, with the leg; 5th, swallowing, eating and drinking 
with the mouth ; 6th, holding and striking: 1g, with the hand ; 
and 7th, work, which however is not very clearly distin guish- 
able from the preceding class. A final class of roots which, 
with two exceptions, are secondary (having two consonants) 
refers to love and desire. In each class there is a cross 
division, according as the sound is a simple vowel, or a 
guttural, a dental, or a labial. The list which follows will 
be found to be supported by the results of the comparative 
table of nearly 200 common roots. 
