Reviews and Book Notices. 439 



The Aryan origin of the Ainos has been insisted upon by 

 several ethnologists, and is indeed the view most generally 

 held at the present time. It is therefore a matter of great 

 interest to find that certain affinities of language are now 

 pointed out, offering as they do, additional proof of the 

 probable correctness of this view. 



Resemblances between the Japanese and Aino languages, 

 are very properly shown to be only apparent. Every one 

 familiar with these people, knows that they use many 

 Japanese words and expressions, and from this the infer- 

 ence has more than once been hastily drawn, that there is 

 an intimate relation between the two people. It would be 

 quite as correct, on similar grounds, to establish an affinity 

 between the European and North American Indian. Prof. 

 Chamberlain, however, shows very clearly, that while these 

 languages are fundamentally distinct, they have become 

 more or less blended as a natural consequence of the inti- 

 mate relations of the two people. Nor could we look for 

 any other result, when such relations have extended over a 

 period of twenty-five centuries. Borrowings from one to 

 the other were frequently made, and thus on the one hand 

 we get the Japanese form in the Aino language, while on 

 the other, Aino names persist wherever these people have 

 once had a habitation. Such names thus become a' part of 

 the Japanese language, although, usually, in a perverted 

 form ; sometimes the modification is carried so far as to 

 render the original form of the word very obscure and hard 

 to determine. These changes, occurring as they are at the 

 present day, afford a most important clue to similar changes 

 in the past, and thus, as we shall see later, serve a most 

 important purpose in tracing the original distribution of the 

 Ainos Of familiar examples we may give the following : 



Atkesh becomes Akkeshi ; Shikot has been changed to 

 Chitose ; Poronai is Horonai, and a most modern example, 

 since the change has been made within fifteen years, is the 

 conversion of Satsuporo into Sappoi'O. That these changes 

 have, on the whole, been effected rapidly, and, as in the 

 last case often without any special transitional forms, is 

 well shown by the fact that in the province of Aomori — 



