Annual Report of the Glass in Philology, Ethnology 

 and Anthropology. By Wm. Hale, Ph.D., Chair- 

 man of the Class. 



[Read before the Institute, Oct. 15, 1872.] 



In presenting the first annual report of this new depart- 

 ment of the Institute, it is hardly necessary to attempt any 

 apology or raison d'Stre for the formation of a special class 

 for the advancement of this kindred group of sciences, 

 which are in the highest degree humanitarian. I say 

 sciences, though it is not many years since philology could 

 first be called a science, and even now there are those who 

 will contend that there is really no science of language, but 

 that science is a term applicable only to the group of 

 studies which are more strictly defined as natural sciences. 

 Language, however, has been proved to have its own laws 

 of growth and development, and the study of these laws 

 has been reduced to a method no less philosophical than 

 that which prevails in the study of material organisms. 



To the philosophical study of language, especially in its 

 connection with archaeology and the development of the 

 human race, much of the best thought of our age is devoted. 

 These studies received their first great impetus from the 

 discovery of the Sanskrit language, and from the recog- 

 nition of the Aryan family of languages, of which it is the 

 oldest type surviving ; and the patient labors of philologists 

 are adding continually to the means of pursuing them. In 

 Europe, the great Sanskrit lexicon of Boehtlinck & Roth, 

 published at St Petersburgh, affording a vast thesaurus of 

 information hitherto inaccessible to scholars, is approaching 

 completion after the labor of twenty years, having but four 



