May 15, 1SS5.] 



SCIENCE. 



405 



astronomical work analogous to that to which he gave 

 his energies at Cordoba. He has already undertaken 

 some longitude determinations, and arranged a time- 

 hall, which is probably already giving daily signals, 

 by which the shipping in the outer roads, twelve 

 miles away, may correct and rate their chronome- 

 ters. 



I have spoken longer than I intended, but will make 

 no apologies, for I know your friendly indulgence. It 

 only remains to say for these Argentine scientific in- 

 stitutions, that I believe their success to be now as- 

 sured ; they will enter upon new and enlarged fields 

 of usefulness, as indeed they ought, for the world 

 moves; and, for myself, that the remembrance of 

 this occasion and of your overwhelming kindness 

 will be a source of pride to me through life, and to 

 my children afterwards. 



SEMITIC LANGUAGES AT HARVARD. 



In a programme of the Semitic courses given by 

 Professors Toy and Lyon in Harvard university, 

 we find the following statements interesting to the 

 young student. The Semitic family (one of the two 

 inflecting families of the world, the other being the 

 Indo-European) is divided into two groups, in which 

 the several languages are distributed as follows: — 



f i. 



North- 

 Semitic. 



South- 

 Semitic. 



Babylonian- Assyrian. 



C Classical Aramaic (Syriac). 

 } I Palmyrene. 



I 2. Aramaic. -{ Jewish Aramaic. 



I Samaritan. 



[ Various modern dialects. 



C Phoenician, older and later (Punic). 



3. Canaauitic.^ Hebrew, biblical and post-biblical. 



I Moabite, etc. 



4. Arabic, classical, and modern dialects of the 



Bedawin, and of Egypt, Algeria, and Syria. 

 I' 5. Sabean, embracing several dialects. 

 < 6. Ethiopic, and the modern related dialects, Am- 

 I haric, Tigre, Tigrina. 



The two groups differ from each other considerably 

 in grammar and lexicon. A member of either is much 

 nearer to its fellow-members than to any member of 

 the other; thus, Assyrian is more important than 

 Arabic for Hebrew lexicography, and Ethiopic and 

 Arabic are of more value than Hebrew or Aramaic 

 for Sabean. Still, all these languages have much in 

 common with one another, and each throws light on 

 the others. 



The choice of a student will depend on his special 

 aim. Aramaic is the simplest Semitic language in 

 forms, is necessary for the study of the Talmud 

 (Gemara), and contains material for biblical textual 

 criticism, and for the ecclesiastical and secular history 

 of the first sixteen or seventeen centuries of our era. 

 Hebrew is indispensable for the critical study of the 

 Old Testament and Talmud (Mishna). Assyrian is 

 grammatically interesting, and valuable for the e?rly 

 history of western Asia, and for North-Semitic civ- 

 ilization in general. Phoenician exists almost wholly 

 in inscriptions, — a few of which are of historical im- 

 portance (B.C. 500-A.D. 150), — and in Latin tran- 



scription in the Poenulus of Plautus. Arabic has 

 most fully preserved the old inflectional forms, is 

 indispensable in the study of general Semitic gram- 

 mar, and has a large and varied literature, of which 

 the historical part is of great value, and the poetry 

 interesting. Sabean, or Himyaritic, is found only in 

 inscriptions, which have recently revealed the exist- 

 ence of an ancient and remarkable civilization in 

 southern Arabia, and a language presenting note- 

 worthy peculiarities. Ethiopic, nearly related to 

 Sabean, is the language of the Christian period of 

 the Semitic colony in eastern Africa. Its literature 

 consists of a Bible translation, monkish chronicles, 

 and versions of several important apocalyptic books. 

 The grammar is remarkable for the symmetry of the 

 verb. At present it has been replaced by various 

 related dialects, one of which was the language of 

 the late King Theodore of Abessinia. 



No genetic relation between the Semitic and Indo- 

 European families has yet been discovered. The lexi- 

 con of the one does not help that of the other, and 

 only the most general connection exists between 

 their grammars. It is only a seeming exception to 

 this statement, where one language has borrowed from 

 another, as is the case with the modern Persian and 

 the Hindustani, a large part of whose vocabularies 

 is taken from the Arabic, and the Eranian Huzva- 

 resh, which has taken much from Aramaic. Turkish, 

 a member of still another family, is similarly indebted 

 to Arabic. 



THE STONE AGE IN AFRICA. 



At the meeting of the Royal society of northern 

 antiquaries, held April 14, 1885, L. Zinck gave an ac- 

 count of the discoveries hitherto made regarding the 

 stone age of Africa. There was now no doubt that 

 Africa had its stone age, as well as Europe. Both in 

 the old cultivated land of Egypt and the well-known 

 desert of Sahara, the inhabitants in their time had 

 only instruments of stone ; but he would speak only 

 about the stone age of South Africa. About twenty 

 years since, was made the first find of stone objects 

 in the region of the Cape of Good Hope. We know 

 now that the natives on the south-west coast of Cape- 

 land, even at the end of the sixteenth century, paid 

 extravagant prices for iron, and Magaelhens had before 

 found the natives of Madagascar using weapons of 

 iron. Relics of the stone age are also found among 

 the Bu-hmen, who were driven back to the Kalahari 

 desert, and whose arrow-heads were of stone. There 

 are found in South Africa, from an ethnological point 

 of view, three peoples, — the Kaffirs, Hottentots, and 

 Bushmen, — who represent three waves of migration. 

 The last are the oldest people of the land, and have 

 in their time extended themselves far to the south, 

 where, in the rocky hollows, they have left monuments 

 of various kinds, executed with much ability. They 

 were acquainted with perspective, and had an appre- 

 ciation of caricature. The Hottentots later drove 

 them back, but were themselves driven back by the 

 Europeans and the Kaffirs. The last, who came from 

 the north, began to encroach on the Cape territory 



