April 26, 1895.] 



SCIENCE. 



455 



fore presumed to be a rhyolitic glass.* The 

 material obtained by Professor H : 1 1 closely 

 resembles the Mohawk Vallej' material. 

 The Texas occurrence is of unusual interest, 

 being in a region where evidences of the 

 former existence of volcanoes are rare. 



H. W. Turner. 



W.vsnixc.Tox. 



CURRENT NOTES ON ANTHROPOLOGY (VI.). 

 THE CAUCASIC LIXGUISTIC STOCK. 



Col. R. Yon Ekckert, of the Russian 

 army, already known for an excellent work 

 on the ethnography of the Caucasus, has 

 just published an epoch-making volume on 

 the languages of that region (Die Sprachen 

 des Kaukasischeu Stammes, Vienna, 1895). 

 In this he solves the intricate problem which 

 has so long puzzled linguists as to the rela- 

 tionship and place of tiiese tongues. He dem- 

 onstrates by satisfactory evidence, structural 

 and lexicographical, that these numerous 

 languages and dialects, some thirty in num- 

 ber (the Ossetic. which is Arj'an, being of 

 course excluded), belong to one family, 

 which should be called the ' Caucasic' It 

 is divided in three groups, the Georgian, 

 the Circassian and the Lesghian. The 

 stock stands wholly independent, all simi- 

 larities to either Ural-Altaic or Indo-Euro- 

 pean proving accidental or unimportant. 

 AVhich of the groups is nearest the ancient 

 original tongue he does not pretend to de- 

 cide ; but he offers striking testimony to 

 the persistence of the traits of these lan- 

 guages. The Georgian was written as 

 early as the ninth century A. D., and he 

 gives a letter composed bj' a bishop in 918. 

 It is quite identical, both in sj-ntax and 

 words, with the current tongue of to-day. 



All these facts are the more to the pur- 

 pose since so much has been made of late 

 years bj' Professors Sayce, Hommell and 

 their followei-s, of what they call the 'Ala- 



* Bull. Phil. Soc. Wasliiugton, Vol. XI., p. 389. 



rodian ' linguistic stock (t. e., the Geor- 

 gian), in connection with the pretended 

 ' Sumerian ' of lower Babylonia. It is 

 likely that they will have to ' back water,' 

 now that comparisons can really be 

 made. 



CUNEIFORM LN'SCRIPTIOXS. 



Dr. Hugo Wlnckler, in his ' History of 

 Babylonia and A.ssyria,' tells us that the 

 cuneiform method of writing was in use 

 among eight nations speaking entirely dif- 

 ferent languages. Whether this is quite 

 accurate or not, we need not stop to con- 

 sider, as there can be no question that it 

 had a much wider distribution than used to 

 be supposed. Last year the well-known 

 French archicologist, M. E. Chantre, un- 

 earthed specimens of it at Pterium and 

 CiBsarea, in Asia Minor, as far west, perhaps, 

 as such inscriptions have been found in 

 place. The excavations continued by the 

 University of Pennsylvania at Niffer have 

 proved rich in finds of tablets. But the 

 champion recent discoveries appear to be 

 those of M. de Sarzec at Tello. A brief ac- 

 count of his eighth campaign in that rich 

 localitj^ appears in the ' Revue Ai-chaeolo- 

 gique ' of December last, extracted from the 

 official report of M. S. Reinach. From it 

 we learn that M. de Sarzec opened a small 

 mound some hundreds of j-ards fi-om that 

 which he had previously worked, and 

 chanced upon the very archives of the old 

 city themselves. Thej' were inscribed on 

 tablets and neatly stored in trenches, where 

 thej' had rested undisturbed these thousands 

 of yeai-s. From these deposits he took out 

 more than thirty tlwumnd tablets, about five 

 thousand in perfect condition, another five 

 thousand very slightly injured, and the 

 others more or less defaced. This magni- 

 ficent discovery will have the greatest im- 

 portance in revealing the history and 

 character of the ancient Babj'lonian civili- 

 zation. 



