530 
SECOND REPORT - 183 £. 
generally received.-—The author commenced with preliminary 
remarks on the resources of knowledge available in researches 
of this kind, and stated it to be his principal design to consider 
and estimate the means of information respecting the history 
of mankind which are furnished by two different methods of 
inquiry, viz. by philological and physical investigations; the 
former including those researches into the structure and affinity 
of languages which have been undertaken with a view to eluci¬ 
date the relations of tribes and races to each other; the latter, 
the attempts which have been made to classify nations by their 
mutual resemblances in figure, complexion, and other physical 
peculiarities. 
“ Philology, in this point of view an important study, dates its 
origin from an asra glorious in the history of modern discovery 
and the achievements of science. It begins with the voyage of 
Magalhaens, who first led the way in the circumnavigation of the 
globe, and whose fame has been recorded by the gratitude of 
posterity upon the heavens as well as upon the earth. While Ma¬ 
galhaens was employed in tracing in the sky nebulas, and new 
seas and oceans on the globe, his companion Pigafetta bethought 
himself of acquiring the means of rendering intelligible and of 
comparing with each other the various dialects of the new races 
of men, whose existence this voyage was destined to make known. 
He began the practice of collecting vocabularies which might 
furnish specimens of the idioms spoken in distant islands of the 
ocean. His example has been followed by succeeding navigators, 
and has led by degrees to results of great interest. The native 
tribes found in remote groups of islands in the great Southern 
Ocean, looked upon themselves as the offspring of the sun and 
moon, or of the soil; they knew nothing of other branches of the 
human family; their whole world and sphere of existence was 
limited by their shores, or by the small circle of their imperfect 
navigation. Accordingly, by some writers it has been confi¬ 
dently assumed that these tribes of men, like the bread-fruit 
and coco-nut trees by which they are fed, are the indigenous 
produce of the coralline or volcanic soil on which they exist. 
This notion might have been strenuously maintained, if re¬ 
searches into the structure and affinity of languages had not fur¬ 
nished its refutation, and displayed, in the idioms of these insular 
tribes, sufficient evidence of their mutual relationship and of the 
derivation of the whole stock of people from a common centre.'' 
The author proceeded to give a brief survey of the history of 
philological inquiries and of the various collections exemplifying 
the diversity and affinity of languages 'which have been made 
since the year 1555. “In 1555 w r as published the first general 
essay on this subject,—the Mifhridates of the learned Conrad 
