966 REPORT—-1890, 
man is that of the origin and home of the Aryan family. The views upon this 
subject have undergone important modification during the last twenty years. The 
opinions based upon comparative philology alone have received a rude shock, and 
the highlands of Central Asia are no longer accepted without question as the 
cradle of the Aryan family, but it is suggested that their home is to be sought 
somewhere in Northern Europe. While the Germans contend that the primitive 
Aryans were the blue-eyed dolichocephalic race, of which the Scandinavians and 
North-Germans are typical examples, the French are in favour of the view that . 
the dark-haired brachycephalic race of Gauls, now well represented in the 
Auvergne, is that of the primitive Aryans. I am not going to enter deeply 
into this question, on which Canon Isaac Taylor has recently published a compre- 
-hensive treatise, and Mr, Frank Jevons a translation of Dr. Schrader’s much more 
extensive work, ‘The Prehistoric Antiquities of the Aryan Peoples.’ Looking at 
the changes that all languages undergo, even when they have the advantage of 
having been reduced into the written form, and bearing in mind the rapidity with 
which these changes are effected ; bearing in mind, also, our extreme ignorance of the 
actual forms of language in use among prehistoric races unacquainted with the art 
of writing, I, for one, cannot wonder at something like a revolt having arisen against 
the dogmatic assertions of those who have, in their efforts to reconstruct early 
history, confined themselves simply to the comparative study of languages and 
grammar. But, notwithstanding any feeling of this kind, I think that all must 
admire the enormous industry and the varied critical faculties of those who haye 
pursued these studies, and must acknowledge that the results to which they have 
attained cannot lightly be set aside, and that, so far as language alone is concerned, 
the different families, their provinces, and mutual relations have, in the main, 
become fairly established. The study of ‘linguistic paleontology,’ as it has been 
termed, will help, no doubt, in determining still more accurately the aflinities of 
the different forms of language, and in fixing the dates at which one separated 
from another, as well as the position that each should oceupy on the family-tree— 
if such a tree exists. But even here there is danger of relying too much on 
negative evidence ; and the absence in the presumed original Aryan language of 
special words for certain objects in general use ought not to be regarded as afford- 
ing absolute proof that such objects were unknown at the time when the languages 
containing such words separated from the parent stock. Not only Professor 
Huxley, but Broca and others have insisted that language as a test of race is as 
often as not, or even more-often than not, entirely misleading. The manner in 
which one form of language flourishes at the expense of another; the various 
ways in which a language spreads, even otherwise than by conquest; the fact 
that different races, with totally different physical characteristics, are frequently 
found speaking the same language, or but slightly different dialects of it: all con- 
duce to show how imperfect a guide comparative philology may be so far as 
enthropological results are concerned. Of late, prehistoric archeology has been 
invoked to the aid of linguistic researches; but here again there is great danger 
of those who are most conversant with the one branch of knowledge being but 
imperfectly acquainted with the other. The different conditions prevailing in 
different countries, the degrees of intercourse with other more civilised nations, 
and local circumstances which influence the methods of life, all add difficulties 
to the laying down of any comprehensive scheme of archeological arrangement 
which shall embrace the relics, whether sepulchral or domestic, of even so limited 
an area as that of Europe. We are all naturally inclined to assume that the 
record of the past is comparatively complete. But in archeology no more than 
geology does this appear to be the case. The interval between the period of 
the river-grayels and that of the caves, such as Kent’s Cavern, in England, 
and those of the Reindeer period of the South of France, may have been but 
small; but our knowledge of the transition is next to none. The gap between 
the Paleolithic period and the Neolithic has, to my mind, still to be bridged over, 
and those who regard the occupation of the Belgian caves as continuous from the 
days of the reindeer down to late Neolithic times seem to me possessed of great 
powers of faith. Even the relations in time between the kjokkenméddings of 
