BY HERMANN B. RITZ, M.A. 



45 



an}^ individual speaker. Moreover, a root may have a 

 certain meaning in one family and apparently a quite 

 different meaning in the other, and phonetic changes 

 seem to have been subject to accident rather than to 

 phonetic laws. Of course, we are not bound to admit 

 the existence of accidents, and we may reasonably as- 

 sume that a law may be found, if we only will or can 

 go deep enough to find it. 



To find the law underlying the phenomena of the 

 Tasmanian speech is the object of the present investiga- 

 tion. 



Again, it has been suggested that this speech is akin 

 to that of the Australian Continent or some parts of it, 

 or to that of the South Sea Islands, or to that of the 

 Andaman Islands, and on these assumptions, theories of 

 ethnological affinity have been based. 



Now, a scientific opinion on this must be founded on 

 the knowledge of all the speeches in question, and is not 

 within the scope of our present study, not only from 

 want of sufficient knowledge, but also because of its 

 extent and practical uncertainty. The similarity of 

 speech between twO' distant races or tribes does not 

 justify even a presumption of ethnological affinity, ex- 

 cept in so far as we may assume the essential uniformit}^ 

 of psychological and physiological processes in all 

 human beings. Still, on the latter assumption we may 

 establish analogies, provided we can find the speakers 

 of the different languages to be at the same stage of 

 mental development. 



Finally, the anthropological aspect of our subject 

 claims our attention, because the evidence of the avail- 

 able records of the Tasmanian speech seems to show 

 that those that used it represented the primitive, or at 

 least very early, stage of human thought and speech. 

 Moreover, it shows that however primitive their thought 

 and speech were, they were of the same kind as those 

 of all other races of which we have any knowledge. 



It seems clear, then, that we must restrict our pre- 

 sent researches to the Tasmanian speech ; and even here 

 we find a larger field than at first we should expect, and 

 are therefore compelled to subdivide it, in order to for- 

 mulate a reasonably complete statement of each part. 



