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with which I have listened to the interesting and learned lecture which has 
just been delivered, and from which, I am sure, we have all derived a great 
amount of information. The subject of the Etruscan language and the his- 
tory of the Etruscan people form one of the most interesting, as well as one 
of the most obscure questions with which we have to deal. As Mr. Taylor 
has told us, a vast number of theories have been propounded on the subject, 
and some of them have been of a most absurd character. There is. no lan- 
guage on earth to which the Etruscan language has not been affiliated at one 
period or another. Even the country to which I belong, Ireland, has been 
one of those which has claimed close relationship with the Etruscans. A 
learned friend of mine wrote a very elaborate work, in which he proved, to 
his own satisfaction, that every Etruscan inscription could be interpreted by 
appealing to Gaelic or to Erse sources. He analyzed several very interesting 
inscriptions, and among the rest that long inscription which has been shown 
to us by Mr. Taylor, and which, whether it is strictly Etruscan or not, is, no 
doubt, one of the earliest inscriptions which have been found in Italy, and 
must have considerable analogy with the Etruscan. After fully considering 
that inscription, he came to the conclusion that it very clearly indicated that 
it contained sailing directions for entering the port of Wexford. (Laughter.) 
This shows that a person may ride a hobby to death ; and the case has been 
very similar with a number of other people who have taken up the subject. 
But of recent years Archajology has become somewhat more of an exact 
science ; clearer reasoning has been applied, and induction has been brought 
to bear upon a larger range of facts connected with the subject. Cer- 
tainly our advancing knowledge of Philology has been one of the matters 
which have been of the greatest possible assistance to us in determining the 
origin of many nations, and I trust that it may prove so in the case of the 
Etruscans. I do not profess to have gone into the details, and I have never 
seen the cubes or dice which Mr. Taylor has brought under our notice to- 
night, although I have heard a great deal about them. It would therefore 
be very presumptuous on my part to attempt to criticise, or to enter into any 
minutice in reference to these deep philological questions. Certainly the facts 
mentioned by Mr. Taylor with reference to the decades and to the mode of 
numeration are very strong and plausible ; and I think that is one of the 
strongest arguments for pronouncing the Etruscan to have been a Turanian 
language. Mr. Taylor did not mention whether, among the Turanian lan- 
guages which he had compared with the Etruscan, he had compared the 
Basque. 
Mr. Taylor. — There are faint traces of the Etruscan in the Basque, which 
is distinctly related to the Finnish. I will show you the comparative near- 
ness of the Basque and Etruscan. The first of the Etruscan numerals — mach, 
“ one "—you get in the Siberian languages, as muk, “ one.” In the Basque 
you cannot get so near; the nearest you get is bat, “one.” No doubt it is the 
same word, but the letters have changed very much. We know that the m 
and b were interchangeable, and that the letter t would sometimes interchange 
