14 



tish languages which were vernacular in the countries in which 

 that patriarch and his descendants took up their residence, and 

 were, in fact, acquired by them during their residence therein, 

 to the exclusion of their paternal tongue. This hypothesis has 

 been advocated at length in 'Grigines Biblicae. 5 In the same 

 work it has also been attempted to be shown that the so-called 

 Chaldee is merely a corruption of the Hebrew spoken by the 

 Jews during their captivity in Babylon, and not the native lan- 

 guage which at that epoch was vernacular in Babylon itself. 

 In like manner is the Syriac to be regarded as only a further 

 degradation and corruption of the Hebrew. Under no circum- 

 stances, indeed, can it claim to be the primitive native tongue 

 of the countries in which it was spoken about the period of the 

 commencement of the Christian era : for, subjected as they had 

 been to repeated and continued foreign invasion and occupation, 

 it is impossible that any native language should during more 

 than twenty centuries have continued to exist without very con- 

 siderable alterations, if indeed it must not have been altogether 

 extirpated. 



The appellation of Semitic or Shemitish, as applied to these 

 languages, must therefore be superseded by that of Hamitish ; 

 under which designation will have to be comprised not only the 

 Canaanitish, Arabian, and African languages which have been 

 enumerated, but also the whole of the native dialects spoken 

 throughout the continent of Africa ; all the inhabitants of which 

 continent must, agreeably to the hypothesis advocated in this 

 paper, have derived their origin from the centre, through the 

 medium of the more civilized countries of Arabia and Egypt. 



The remaining class of mankind which will here be mentioned 

 is that of which the Chinese, and the various Indo-Chinese na- 

 tions, may in the present day be regarded as the principal repre- 

 sentatives. In tracing back these people to their common 

 origin with the rest of mankind, in accordance with the fore- 

 going hypothesis, it is manifest that their progenitors must in 

 the earliest ages have occupied the more western portions of 

 Asia, and that they were, in fact, of like origin with the abori- 

 gines of the Peninsula of India, of whom traces are yet left in 

 the Bheels and other savage races scattered over various por- 



