November 15, 



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SCIENCE. 



331 



which Professor Max Miiller attributes the alteration in the mean- 

 ing of the word. 



Moreover, a great change in the vegetation of a country, such as 

 the replacement of the Danish oak-forests by forests of beech, 

 must have occupied many centuries. At what moment, then, was 

 the name transferred from one tree to the other ? Were the people 

 of Denmark content to have no name for the beech when it first 

 appeared, and what did they call the oak after having deprived 

 it of its original title, in the prolonged period during which the two 

 trees must have been growing side by side .' 



Another hypothesis, less beset .with difficulties, has been ad- 

 vanced by Geiger and Fick, who suppose that the word originally 

 signified the beech, and received among the Greeks the changed 

 signification of the oak. If the Greeks had migrated from a land 

 of beeches to a land of oaks, there is no difficulty in understanding 

 that they may have transferred the name of one tree to the other. 

 The word meaning the food-tree ((jiay Iv, " to eat " ) would be as ap- 

 plicable to the evergreen oak, with its acorns, as to the beech, the 

 mast of which was the staple food for their swine. The beech, as 

 has been said, is not found south of Dodona, which lies in the cen- 

 tre of Epirus. It is noticeable that the most ancient Greek legends 

 are connected with Dodona, where the Greeks made their first 

 halt in their progress to the south, and where the earliest prophetic 

 utterances were obtained from the rustling of the leaves of the 

 sacred tree, — the ipT/yb-. Hence we may believe that the Greeks 

 entered the peninsula, not from Asia Minor, but from the north- 

 west, through the valleys of Epirus. This route would e.xplain 

 how the old Aryan word denoting the beech came to be applied by 

 the immigrants to designate the tree which flourished on the hill- 

 slopes of their new territory. In modern times we have similar in- 

 stances of transferred names in the United States, where such 

 English names as " the robin," " the hemlock," and " the maple " 

 are used to denote wholly different species. 



But with regard to the Greeks, it may be urged that before they 

 entered the peninsula they must have been already acquainted with 

 the deciduous oak which flourishes in the region whence they emi- 

 grated. This objection is met by the fact that the Greeks had a 

 second name for the oak, dpi),-, which corresponds to the old Irish 

 daur oak, as well as to the Gothic iriu, and the Sanscri* dru, 

 which mean simply a tree. Both of the Greek words for the oak 

 are used by Sophocles in speaking of the sacred oak at Dodona. 



The Greek word for the deciduous oak agrees with the Celtic 

 word, while the Greek word for the evergreen oak was the word 

 which in their former home had denoted the beech. 



The question as to whether the original Aryan word denoted the 

 beech or the oak is not unimportant, as from it may be drawn an 

 inference as to the primitive seat of the Aryan race. 



According to Professor Max Miiller, the Aryans migrated from 

 Central Asia, where the beech is unknown. If this had been the 

 case, it is extremely difficult to explain how the ancestors of the 

 Latins, Celts, and Teutons, migrating, as Pictet maintains, at dif- 

 ferent times and by different routes, to lands where the beech 

 abounds, should all have chanced to call it by the same primitive 

 name, merely modified according to the fundamental phonetic laws 

 of Latin and German. But, on the other hand, all such difficulties 

 disappear if we assume that the cradle of the Aryans was in the 

 original beech region ; that is, roughly speaking, in the valleys of 

 the Rhine, the Main, and the Danube; and that it was here that 

 the differentiation of the Greek, Latin, Celtic, and German lan- 

 guages took place. 



The name of the beech bears also on the solution of the ques- 

 tion as to which of the neolithic races has the best claim to repre- 

 sent the primitive Aryans. The choice probably lies between the 

 brachycephalic Celto-Latin race, some of whose earliest settlements 

 may be discovered in the pile-dwellings of Bavaria, Switzerland, 

 and northern Italy, and the dolichocephalic Scandinavian race, 

 whose remains are found in the Danish kitchen-middens. That 

 one of these races constituted the primitive Aryan race, and im- 

 posed its language on the other, is highly probable. 



Now, as we have already seen, in the neolithic age the beech had 

 not yet reached Denmark, the fir being at that time the predomi- 

 nant tree. In the bronze age the fir was succeeded by the oak, 

 which gave place in the iron period to the beech : hence the beech 



region was at that time inhabited by the Celto-Latin people, while 

 the Scandinavian race in all probability dwelt to the north of its 

 limit. 



The beech has therefore a threefold ethnological significance, i. 

 It proves that the Greeks entered Hellas from the north, probably 

 through Epirus, and not, as has been contended, from Asia Minor. 

 2. It proves that the differentiation of the Aryan languages took 

 place not in Asia, but in Central Europe, on either side of the 

 beech line ; the Slavs and Lithuanians being to the east of it, the 

 Greeks, Celts, and Latins, farther to the west. 3. It makes it prob- 

 able that the primitive Aryans belonged to the brachycephalic 

 Celto-Latin race, and not the dolichocephalic Scandinavians. 



ENGLAND'S COAL-RESOURCES. 



A PAPER on this subject was read by Professor Edward Hull at 

 the recent meeting of the British Association. To at once set at 

 rest any alarm that may be felt as to Professor Hull unfurling the 

 old banner of " Exhaustion of English Coal-Fields," Engineering 

 states that he estimates there is enough coal in , Northumberland 

 and Durham to last, at the present rate of consumption, for three 

 hundred years ; supposing, of course, one goes deep enough for it. 

 Before that period has elapsed, however, it is to be hoped, on be- 

 half of posterity, that the petroleum-engine, the sun-motor, or some 

 other force, will have promoted steam and gas engines to the 

 serener atmosphere of the antiquarian museum. 



Professor Hull is the director of the Geological Survey in Ireland, 

 and he naturally turns to coal as a refreshing subject, which has 

 not become hackneyed to him by his official labors. By a diagram 

 shown on the walls, the output of coal since the beginning of the 

 century was given. The figures have often been quoted, but may 

 be given once again in brief. In the year 1800 the output of coal 

 probably did not exceed 10,000,000 tons, a very large proportion of 

 which was drawn from the Newcastle district. In the year 1830 

 the quantity raised in the British Islands was about 29,000,000 tons, 

 it i860 it had reached 80,042,698, and in 1888 the quantity had 

 reached about 170,000,000 tons, as shown by the returns issued by 

 the Board of Trade. There was reason for believing that between 

 the beginning of the century and the year 1875 the output of coal 

 had more than doubled itself for each successive quarter of a cen- 

 tury. Since the year i860, in which the author had estimated that 

 sufficient coal existed to a limiting depth of 4,000 feet to last, at the 

 rate of production for that year, for one thousand years, the 

 available quantity of coal had been reduced by 3,650,000,000 tons ; 

 but this amount, great as it was, had not very materially affected 

 the coal-resources. The production of the South Wales coal-field 

 had doubled in the quarter of a century between 1854 and 1879, 

 and in 1888 amounted to the enormous total of 27,355,000 tons, 

 largely owing to the demand for steam-coal in the Cardiff district. 

 The resources of this great basin are enormous, and render it capa- 

 ble of maintaining or increasing its present output for a long period 

 of years. The Lancashire and Cheshire and the great Yorkshire 

 and Nottingham coal-fields are highly progressive, as is also the 

 Northumberland and Durham. This great northern coal-field, not- 

 withstanding the long period over which it has been worked, shows 

 no signs of falling off in its output. The discovery of the liassic 

 ironstone of the Cleveland district, and the great exports from the 

 northern ports, have given a vast impetus to northern coal-mining 

 during the last quarter of a century ; and the enormous drain upon 

 this coal-field, the limits of which have been definitely determined, 

 cannot fail to cause a serious falling-off in its output during the 

 twentieth century, although there is sufficient to maintain the pres- 

 ent rate of consumption for three hundred years. The relation 

 between coal-production and the development of the iron trade 

 since the discovery of the ironstone deposits of the North Riding of 

 Yorkshire, and the richer hematites of North Lancashire and 

 Cumberland, was then considered ; and the different coal-fields of 

 the British Isles were passed in review in order to show those 

 which are in a progressive condition, and which are stationarj' or 

 retrogressive. The author concluded his subject by expressing an 

 opinion, that, while the enormous output of coal during the past 

 few years had not actually crippled England's resources, a general 

 rise in the value of coal must ensue in the near future, owing to 



