PEDIGREE OF VERTEBRATE ANIMALS. 249 
conjecture was tested. The further an inquirer has 
carried his survey of the conditions of organization in 
any of the larger groups, the less will he be able to 
divest himself of the genealogical idea in his every act 
and thought. 
All this is so self-evident, that one would scarcely sup- 
pose that the use of this method could have been made 
a subject of reproach to the doctrine of Descent. Never- 
theless, it frequently occurs, and the champions of the 
doctrine of Descent are blamed for often speaking of 
mere probabilities, forgetting that even in cases in which 
the probability ultimately proves false, the refuted hy- 
pothesis has led to progress. Of this the science of 
language has recently borne testimony. It is well known 
that linguistic comparison within the family of Indo- 
Germanic tongues suggested the reconstruction of the 
primitive language which formed their common basis. 
Johannes Schmidt ** now proves that the fundamental 
forms disclosed may have originated at widely different 
periods, and hence that the primitive language, regarded 
as a whole, is a scientific fiction. Nevertheless, inquiry 
was essentially facilitated by this fiction, and with it 
was intimately connected the formation of a pedigree of 
the Indo-Germanic linguistic family, as a hypothesis 
supported by many indications. A bifurcation was 
assumed into a South European language, with Greek, 
Italian, and Celtic ramifications, and another language, 
from a second division of which proceeded the funda- 
mental language of North Europe and the Aryan funda- 
mental language. Although Johannes Schmidt has 
demonstrated that this pedigree is false, as the existence 
of Slavotic shows the impossibility of the first division 
