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T. 



336 Mr, Pickering on the Orthography of the 



medium of their languages, than ia any other manner (which 

 every day's experience renders more and more proljable) ; then 

 it is undeniable, that a careful inquiry into the languages of a 

 people, who were formerly the possessors of one entire hemi- 

 sphere, is a subject of great moment to the inhabitants of the old 

 as well as the new world. And, as naturalists are now investi- 

 gating the structure and history of the globe itself, by collecting 

 fragments of the component parts, from the summits of its moun- 

 tains to the depths of its seas, so we must study the constitution 

 and history of its possessor, man, by collecting specimens of him, 

 especially of his distinguishing characteristick, language, from the 



most remote and barbarous, as well as the most refined portions 

 of the race ; specimens, which, indeed, with our present limited 

 knowledge, seem to be dispersed over the earth in as extraordina- 

 ry a manner, and in situations where we should as little expect to 



find them, as the fragments of animal and vegetable nature which we 



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meet with in the recesses of the earth. For, as we find the pro- 



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ductions of the ocean upon the heights of our mountains, so we 



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discover, for example, fragments of the remote Asiatick languages 



imbedded, if I may use the expression, in those of the 



tant extremities of Europe ; as of the Sanscrit in the Russian* 



A 



and other western tongues ; and sometimes we find an entire 

 language spoken by a small body of people in the midst of vari- 

 ous others, yet totally distinct in all respects (so far as we are yet 

 informed) from the languages by which it is thus surrounded; as in 



the case of the Basque language in Spain, which, as philolo 



» 



perceptible affinity with any of the neighbourir'^ 



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European tongues. f 



Rapports entre la langue Sanscrit et la langue Russe. Petersburg, 1811. 

 t bee Mr. Bu Ponceau's Report on the ladian Languages, p. xxxix. 



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