526 Evolution and Language 
d’ India still survives, while in German the name 7'ruthahn seems to 
be derived onomatopoetically from the bird’s cry, though a dialectic 
Calecutischer Hahn specifies erroneously an origin for the bird from 
the Indian Calicut. In the Spanish pavo, on the other hand, there is a 
curious confusion with the peacock. Thus in these names for objects 
of common knowledge, the introduction of which into Europe can be 
dated with tolerable definiteness, we see evinced the methods by 
which in remoter ages objects were named. The words were borrowed 
from the community whence came the new object, or the real or 
fancied resemblance to some known object gave the name, or again 
popular etymology might convert the unknown term into something 
that at least approached in sound a well-known word. 
The Origin of Species had not long been published when the 
parallelism of development in natural species and in languages struck 
investigators. At the time, one of the foremost German philologists 
was August Schleicher, Professor at Jena. He was himself keenly 
interested in the natural sciences, and amongst his colleagues was 
Ernst Haeckel, the protagonist in Germany of the Darwinian theory. 
How the new ideas struck Schleicher may be seen from the following 
sentences by his colleague Haeckel. “Speech is a physiological function 
of the human organism, and has been developed simultaneously with 
its organs, the larynx and tongue, and with the functions of the brain. 
Hence it will be quite natural to find in the evolution and classifica- 
tion of languages the same features as in the evolution and classifica- 
tion of organic species. The various groups of languages that are 
distinguished in philology as primitive, fundamental, parent, and 
daughter languages, dialects, etc., correspond entirely in their de- 
velopment to the different categories which we classify in zoology 
and botany as stems, classes, orders, families, genera, species and 
varieties. The relation of these groups, partly coordinate and partly 
subordinate, in the general scheme is just the same in both cases; 
and the evolution follows the same lines in both.” These views were 
set forth in an open letter addressed to Haeckel in 1863 by Schleicher 
entitled, “The Darwinian theory and the science of language.” Un- 
fortunately Schleicher’s views went a good deal farther than is 
1 Haeckel, The Evolution of Man, p. 485, London, 1905. This represents Schleicher’s 
own words: Was die Naturforscher als Gattung bezeichnen wiirden, heisst bei den 
Glottikern Sprachstamm, auch Sprachsippe; naher verwandte Gattungen bezeichnen sie 
wohl auch als Sprachfamilien einer Sippe oder eines Sprachstammes....Die Arten einer 
Gattung nennen wir Sprachen eines Stammes; die Unterarten einer Art sind bei uns die 
Dialekte oder Mundarten einer Sprache; den Varietiten und Spielarten entsprechen die 
Untermundarten oder Nebenmundarten und endlich den einzelnen Individuen die 
Sprechweise der einzelnen die Sprachen redenden Menschen. Die Darwinsche Theorie 
und die Sprachwissenschaft, Weimar, 1863, p. 12 f. Darwin makes a more cautious 
statement about the classification of languages in The Origin of Species, p. 578 (P. ula, 
Edition, 1900). igin of Species, p. 578 (Popular 
