334 KANSAS CITY REVIEW OF SCIENCE. 



of text. Mankind are regarded as one species zoologically, and the races are 

 considered as different " breeds." The white race is the last differentiated. A 

 black type once stretched from Africa to the Philippine Islands and New Guinea, 

 and is still represented by Negroes, Mincopies, A etas, and Papuans. Man is 

 thought to have appeared in the New World and the Old in a geological period 

 earlier than the present, perhaps a time "when there was no ocean between" 

 " the Mongols and the North American Indians." 



Languages and their progressive differentiation are treated with considerable 

 fullness of illustration, from the rude sign-and-gesture language of lower animals 

 and children to articulate language and written signs or • ideas and of speech. 

 Imitative gestures are the natural language of the simplest human condition. 

 The first vocal utterances are emotional and most inarticulate. The next stage 

 of articulate speech is chiefly imitative, and hence very similar words occur in 

 widely distinct languages. We employ the term articulate to denote the articula- 

 tions or joints of a vocal sound, effected by the alternation of vowels and conso- 

 nants ; though Mr. Tylor applies it, unadvisedly, we think, to the joints of a sen- 

 tence. The author's view of sentence-building and its progressive development 

 is inteUigent and sound. As to the relation between language and race, he is 

 wise in pronouncing it an uncertain criterion of ethnic distinctions. Generally, 

 people of one ethnic stock speak one or more dialects of one original language ; 

 but manifestly some, by captivity, by neighborhood of a superior race, or by 

 other causes, may be led to employ a language unknown to their ancestors. Yet 

 affinity of languages must always be assumed as evidence, prima facie, of ethnic 

 consanguinity. The linguistic stocks of the White race are mostly Aryan and 

 Semitic. The Egyptian language, either by absorption or inheritance, possesses 

 many Semitic elements. No success has been attained in the effort to trace Aryan 

 and Semitic languages to an older parent tongue. The Tatar nations speak lan- 

 guages of a distinct family. The Chinese and Indo-Chinese show obvious kinship, 

 though after a long process of differentiation. The Chinese and Siamese lan- 

 guages are far removed from a /r/wzy/w condition. Though possessing monosyl- 

 labic and grammatical simplicity, this is rather the outcome of long attrition and 

 disintegration than of a formative stage. The Akkadian tongue, spoken by the first 

 settlers of Babylonia, "shows analogies which may connect it with the Tatar or 

 Mongolian languages." We would suggest, however, that this does not show the 

 primitive Babylonians to have been Mongoloids, since, as we believe, the Akka- 

 dian tongue was Hamitic, and acquired Tatar elements only through contact 

 with subjugated aboriginal Mongoloids, who were the predecessors of the White 

 race in all Western Asia. Another family of languages is the Dravidian, of India. 

 The Polynesian Blacks, whether racially connected with African Negroes or not, 

 speak languages which stand apart, and constitute a separate family. In South 

 Africa the great body of Blacks speak Bantu languages, though the Mandingoes 

 stand apart. The speech of the Hottentot-Bushman is also fundamentally dis- 

 tinct. In America, linguistic diversification has been carried to a great extent, 

 and a number of distinct families must be recognized. All the languages of the 



