﻿lxxii PROCEEDINGS OF THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETF. 



titious acquirement were wanting, it will be found in this, that a 

 whole nation may lose its original tongue, and in its stead adopt any- 

 foreign one. The language which was the vernacular one of the 

 Jews 3000 years ago has ceased to be so for above 2000, and the 

 descendants of those who spoke it are now speaking an infinity of 

 foreign tongues, — sometimes European and sometimes Asiatic. 

 Languages derived from a single tongue of Italy have superseded 

 the many native languages which were once spoken in Spain, in 

 France, and in Italy itself. A language of German origin has nearly 

 displaced, not only all the native languages of Britain and Ireland, 

 but the numerous ones of a large portion of America. Some eight 

 millions of negroes are planted in the New World, whose forefathers 

 spoke many African tongues. These African tongues have nearly 

 disappeared, having been supplanted by idioms derived from the 

 German and Latin languages. 



" It necessarily follows from what has now been stated, that Man, 

 when he first appeared on earth, was destitute of language. He had 

 to frame one : each separate tribe framed its own, and hence the 

 multitude of tongues. However difficult may appear to us the task 

 of framing a language, there can be no doubt that in every case the 

 framers were arrant savages, which is proved by the fact, that the 

 rudest tribes ever discovered had already completed the task of 

 forming a perfect language. The languages spoken by the grovelling 

 savages of Australia are in this state, and even more artificial and com- 

 plex in their structure than those of many people far more advanced. 



" The first rudiments of language must have consisted of a few 

 articulate sounds in the attempts made by the speechless but social 

 savages to make their wants and wishes known to each other ; and 

 from these first efforts to the time in which language had attained 

 the completeness which we find it to have reached among the rudest 

 tribes ever known to us, countless ages we must presume to have 

 elapsed. 



" In every department of language we find evidence of the great 

 antiquity of man. Between the time, for example, when men had ac- 

 quired the art of fashioning a club, of kindling a fire, and of making 

 a flint knife, and that in which writing was invented, many ages 

 must have passed. The conditions of quality of race and of local 

 advantages must have been propitious to allow of the discovery 

 having been at all ; and so we find that it never has been made 

 where these were not favourable. 



" The Egyptians must have attained a large measure of civiliza- 

 tion before they had invented symbolic or phonetic writing, and yet 

 we find these in the most ancient of their monuments 



" From the sketch which I have now given of the formation of 

 language, the conclusion is, I think, inevitable, that the birth of Man 

 is of vast antiquity. He came into the world without language, and 

 in every case had to achieve the arduous and tedious task of con- 

 structing speech which, in the rudest form in which we find it, it 

 must have taken many thousands of years to accomplish." — L. H. 

 March 26, 1861. 



