LANGUAGES OP THE INDO-EUROPEAN FAMILY. 297 



German relative erd remain, both of which come from the Hebrew 

 ERETZ. The Irish flue, the cheek, can at once be referred to the 

 Hebrew LECHI ; and the Persian hez, 2^ goat, and hezer, seed, to EZ and 

 ZERA in the same language, the latter word being connected with 

 the Latin sero. As the borrowing of the Latin betrays itself by the 

 presence of the Coptic article in the Romance languages, so the 

 bori-owing of the Sanskrit appears in the Hindustani dialects. Admi, 

 a man, ma, a mother and beti a daughter are so like the Arabic 

 ADEM, UM and BINT (Heb. BATH) that they must have come 

 directly from some such Semitic source ; but bap, a father and bhai, 

 a brother, must have picked up the b which precedes the AB and AH 

 or ACH (Arab. AKH) of the Hebrew during an older period than 

 that of the Hindustani. , 



It is not to be supposed that in every case in which we find the 

 same root with and without the prefix p, ph, b, v, in the same or 

 different languages we are to conclude necessarily that we have to 

 deal with the Coptic article. A very common German verbal prefix 

 he, as in bedecken, bedenken, befehlen, is an inseparable intensative 

 particle, while ab and bei as in abschneiden, beif'dgen, are separable 

 particles with ablative and dative powers. Either of these particles 

 might readily be mistaken for the article. Another interesting case 

 in which the same error might happen is that of the word with 

 which our Hebrew scriptures begin, BRESHITH. There is no 

 doubt whatever that this word is the original of our English first, 

 which ignorant etymologists have derived from a superlative form of 

 the Anglo Saxon feor, far. The Danish fbrst, while agreeing with 

 our English ordinal, shows how mistaken is such an etymology, and 

 the Dutch eerst and German erst make it still more apparent by the 

 absence of the initial f. The Dutch and German forms present us 

 with the Hebrew original RESHITH, the first or beginning, the h 

 which is replaced in Danish and English by / being the preposition 

 in. Although this example is introduced as a beacon to warn against 

 an indiscriminating reference of all initial p and b sounds to a Coptic 

 original, I may be permitted to say in passing that both Theology 

 and Geology would be gainers were the literal " First " to replace 

 " In the beginning " at the commencement of our English version of 

 the Bible. 



It is doubtful whether the Armenian Jiink, the numeral five, as 

 contrasted with the pancha, penj, panch, pianch, penc, &c., of the 



