AFPItlATlON OP THE ALGONQUIN LANGUAGES. 19 



vocabularies, still more striking and definite results might have been 

 obtained. To the thirty words above mentioned I have added the 

 numerals of the Algonquin languages up to ten, similarly comparing 

 them, but with results not quite so favourable. Still, even in this 

 difficult field of comparison, important analogies appear. To exhibit 

 the negative side of the argument, I have placed over against the 

 Algonquin and Malay-Polynesian words the coiTesponding terms in 

 the Asiatic and allied languages from which the American forms of 

 speech might naturally be expected to take their derivation. Such 

 are the Ugrian, Mongol, Tartar and Mantchu tongues, forming the 

 Ural-Altaic class ; the Samoied, Yenisei and Yukagir, conveniently 

 termed Asiatic-Hyperborean; and the Japanese, Aino, Tchuktchi 

 and Kamtschatdale, which are grouped as Peninsular. While a few 

 analogies appear among some of these, their dissimilarity from the 

 families under consideration is well worthy of attention. Here also 

 I must confess that the imperfection of my lists, which are not selec- 

 tions, but contain all the material at present in my possession, hinders- 

 me from drawing too strict a line of demarcation. Lest it might be 

 supposed that the analogy of the Algonquin with the Malay-Poly- 

 nesian languages to which I have compared them, is shared by other 

 American families of speech, I have set forth the prevailing forms of 

 the terms chosen for comparison in the Athabascan or Tinneh, the 

 Wyandot-Iroquois, the Dacotah or Sioux, and the Choctaw classes, 

 with all of which the Algonquin tongues are in geographical relation. 

 As far as my knowledge of the Malay-Polynesian languages ex- 

 tends, and it is very limited, I must admit that the striking lexical 

 affinities are not borne out by equally close resemblances in the 

 structure of language, as we compare for instance the grammar of the 

 Algonquin with that of the Malays or of the Tonga islanders. There 

 are, however, many widely difieriug grammatical forms among the 

 large Oceanic class to which these belong. The Tagala spoken in the 

 Philippine islands is, according to Dr. Latham, "essentially agglu- 

 tinate in respect to its inflection ;" and I must leave to those who 

 are better versed in these tongues the task of comparing their agglu- 

 tination with that of the Algonquin languages. While far from 

 disparaging the value of grammatical forms in such connections as 

 that under consideration, I am as far from believing in their perma- 

 nence. Words are the bones of language, and we might as well take 

 the whale and the bat out of the Mammalia as to separate tongues 



