THE LATIN VERB JUBERE. 349 



must be earlier than quaeso. Strange to say some light may be 

 thrown on this point by the language of our much misunderstood 

 blackfellows of Australia ; the district which we call Yass was 

 was by them called Yarr, for they have no s, but Yarr was by 

 them so pronounced that the early settlers there took the name to 

 be Yass. But further, as to our root gab, if I were to declare 

 to you without explanation, that the Greek noun eros, "love," is 

 derived from gab, you would at once declare that philology was 

 gone mad, but I will show you the path by which I reach eros. 

 The L. quaero means "to seek-to-obtain," "to desire," "to aim 

 at" ( = L. ap-pet-ere), which meaning is clearly brought out in 

 the participle quaesitus with its compounds, and in the noun 

 quaestus, "gain"; you also see that the I. -K. iarr, for ga-air, "to 

 seek," is the same word as the L. quaero ; now a participial noun 

 from iarr is iarr-aidh or iarr-oidh, "an asking, a desiring, a 

 soliciting," and this seems to me to be the same word as eros, 

 erot- (as if yerr-oids) "love, desire, appetence," which also is a 

 participial form in Greek ; this derivation of the word is supported 

 by the Gr. verb erot-ao (from eros), which reverts to the first 

 signification of "asking." If the derivation which I now suggest is 

 correct, then I understand why the use of eros in Greek is so 

 different from that of storge and agape, for they are applied only 

 to the " love " of parents, children, and friends. 



Before leaving this paragraph I will take stock of the phonetic 

 principles which we have observed in it : — (I) the medials b, g, d, 

 are often aspirated into bh, gh, dh; (?n) bh ( = ^the digamma) and 

 dh are often quiescent between vowels; as, I.-K. du-bh-acas, 

 bui-dh-e; Gr. ogdo-/~-os; H. na-bh-ar, nur; I.-K. ga-bh-air; (n) 

 initial g is often dropped, as, !3. giri, " mountain," Gr. oros ; (o) 

 initial g = k = L. qu ; (p) transposition of letters, especially of 1, s, 

 and r, in the same syllable, is common ; as, H. targ-umin, 

 "translations," = modern Persian drag-oman, "an interpreter;" 

 H. kesebh = kehb-es, "lamb"; Gr. kartos = kratos, "strength"; 

 E. grain, garn-er ; E. horse, old Ger. hros, S. hresh, "to 

 neigh"; (q) r changes into s and s into r, as, L. lares, lases ; 

 (r) participles are used as nouns, as, L. animans. 



VI. I wish now to call to your recollection the fact that when 

 language was first formed, — I will not say, invented, fori believe 

 the faculty of articulate speech to be a special gift from heaven — 

 the form of the root-words in use must have been simple, and the 

 number of them small, corresponding to the limited wants of 

 man. As to the form of these primitive root-words, in the Aryan 

 family they were essentially monosyllabic and biconsonantal, that 

 is, they were words of one syllable, consisting of two consonants 

 combined with a vowel either between or after them ; as examples 

 we have the S, kri, kar, "to make," Gr. phil-os, "friendly," L. 



