the so-called radically connected languages, for example, within the Indo-German family, Sanskrit, Zend, German, Slavonic, Celtic, Greek, Latin, and then again within the Latin in its Romance daughter-languages, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Provençal, French, Wallachian (to say nothing of the still subordinate dialects), the principle of continual splitting and severance from an originally single line, which, like the trunk of a tree, divides into a plurality of branches and twigs. But he who, against all chance of success, seeks also for those families which are, as it seems to me, specifically distinct and genealogically unconnected, a higher unity reaching back over them to that point, that in the last and highest instance the families of language of the earth, without exception, and from the lowest to the highest,. must find their historical point of issue in but a single root, as from the one mother stem of the banyan tree, daughter-stems, bodily connected with it, spread themselves far around,-well, I wish him much luck on his road. Practicable, at least in the present state of science, and with the most patient and careful use of the means at her command, can such a project never be."

To attempt to hold the balance between Pott and Max Müller is the last thing we should think of doing. We had rather turn aside to call attention to a point upon which not theory, but observation is urgently needed. Every one knows that in some languages, especially of barbarous tribes, a process of breaking down is going on by which several words or particles are put together and then reduced by hurry or imperfect pronunciation to a form in which the original elements are scarcely, if at all, recognisable by any one who does not know the history of the word. There is an account of the formation of a North American Indian word, meaning, if we remember right, "give me your pretty little paw," from a number of words run together, and mutilated beyond all recognition. The story has been decanted from one book into another till readers are fairly sick of it, and look involuntarily forward when they meet with any allusion to American languages, in the fear that the pretty little paw is, for the fiftieth time, coming down upon them. But, though this important subject is often alluded to in a loose general way, how small a quantity of evidence we have regarding this important phenomenon beyond the scanty instances to be found in Hecke welder and Buschmann, and a few others, how little we know of the limits of its occurrence, and the condition of language which specially favours it. We do not say that no attention has been paid to it, but that the systematic body of observations which are urgently wanted from different parts of the world is hardly begun. A language running riot in such formations as this, might, for all we know, change its whole vocabulary in a few

generations, and alter itself beyond recognition. This matter is one on which sound observation can only be made by persons living in contact with savage tribes, and being able to carry their observations over a series of years, and it is clear that till we have more complete and scientific knowledge of what this process can and cannot do, its results will always be a barrier to the general classification of languages in their genealogical order. Our attention was lately recalled to this point by meeting with the word shillorth in common use in the West of England, and thus making up with haporth and pennorth, a series of formations in close analogy with the brokendown compounds of North America, in which the component parts of halfpennyworth, pennyworth, shillingsworth, are hardly less mutilated than in the regular American examples.

Much of the argument of Pott v. Kaulen goes into matter less belonging to anthropology than to biblical criticism, in which Professor Pott's views belong to the rationalistic school. Some remarks on the personification of names of tribes, &c., into mythic ancestors, however, belong to comparative mythology, and furnish a highly remarkable list of eponymic myths, of the class of that of Turk, and his two descendants, Tatar and Mongol, and that of Herakles and his two sons, Iber and Celtus, from whom, of course, the Iberians and Celts are descended. Perhaps the most remarkable are the personified African cities from Barth, the towns Rano and Kano, Katsena and Segseg. The author has not judged it necessary to give a complete list, including our own familiar Brutus and others who are to be met with, but a still fuller treatment of the theme would be a desirable contribution to science.

At p. 34 some remarks are made on the ways in which it may come to pass that an individual may have a plural name, as in the cases of Amici and Medici. There are some well-known Spanish names which might be adduced in this connection, Dolores, Mercedes, Angeles, &c., which form their diminutives so curiously in the first and last instances by the compromise of a feminine plural to a masculine noun, of course with a view to the fact that they are women's names, Dolorcitas, Merceditas, Angelitas. It is fair to treat these words as names, as they are commonly used as such, though technically they are only abbreviations on the high road to becoming independent names, for (unless we are mistaken) girls are not christened Dolores, &c., but Maria de los Dolores, Maria de las Mercedes, Maria de los Angeles, Mary of the Dolours, of the Joys, of the Angels.

Belonging, also, to mythology are remarks on the world-egg,

p. 68, and the two calabashes which, in Africa, represent the two halves of the egg-shell which formed heaven and earth. At p. 27, &c., are remarks on legends of genealogies and creations of man, made with a purpose of riveting the chains of caste, of which the descent of the Brahmins, Kshattriyas, and so forth, from the head, arms, thighs, and feet of Brahma, is the typical instance. Towards the end of the book, Professor Pott again gives his reason for entering into controversy, namely that Kaulen's book has in it that which might deceive many, by a misuse of the outward garb of science, and by taking to itself its phraseology, without really being science, or, at bottom, even wishing to be. We will not attempt to judge how far this is true, but Professor Pott's book leaves upon us an impression, that controversy in print between theology and philology is a thing to be avoided. Comparative philology is, and probably long will be, in an incomplete and transitionary state, especially as to first principles, and trains of reasoning, which students read for the sake of the positive knowledge to be got out of them, have often not the force in controversy which belongs to the well-laid arguments which can be set out even by an ignorant and narrow-minded controversialist whose very train of thought may spoil him for better work. To put an imaginary instance: philologists all know that Wilhelm v. Humboldt was the master-mind to whom so much of the higher development of their science is due, and the results of his labours have spread far beyond the small circle of the men who have been really able to follow the workings of that wonderful mind. But even those who know but very little of his works, know that they abound in what his well-known commentator delicately calls dualisms, but which the poorest controversialist might, and probably would, bring forward as flagrant and stultifying contradictions, and on the strength of which he could hold Humboldt up to ridicule, as saying a thing in one chapter and categorically denying it in the next, and, in an appeal to the public, it would be very hard to refute him. We have found in England that to bring scientific argument into the exciting atmosphere of religious controversy has not produced desirable results, but of course it may be different in Germany.

We in England are hoping soon to see the third volume of Professor Pott's Etymological Researches, in which the Sanskrit roots are worked out into the newer Aryan languages. The early edition of thirty years ago is, of course, now far behind the times, and there is no book to which the student of the higher Aryan etymology can go for a treatment of the subject as a whole. It is to be hoped that

we may soon have, from the man to whom we owe so large a share of the knowledge of philology in its highest departments which enables us to look down from so great height upon the etymologists of the last century, the completion of his great work in its new and more perfect form.

ITALIAN ANTHROPOLOGY.*

DR. GIUSTINIANO NICOLUCCI is a convincing evidence that the light of one of the most modern of the sciences, if we date from the period of its proper cultivation, has begun to shine in Italy. His learned, systematic work on ethnology, Delle Razze Umane, appeared at Naples in 1857, in two vols. 8vo., illustrated with fifty-six plates, many of which are coloured. The motto selected for these volumes, "Ex uno omne genus hominum" (Act. Apost. xvii, 26), evinces the side from which he regards human races,-the same taken with so much candour, and laboriously pursued with so little satisfactory result, by Prichard, whose great work Dr. Nicolucci appears, in some measure, to have set before him as his model. It is an able and very instructive review of the whole family of man, not merely from the physical and craniological points, but historically and linguistically, also, and, by the diligent research of the author, embodies much information obtained since the days of Prichard. He dedicates the fourth chapter of his second book, the most copious in the work, to the "Famiglia Pelasgica" of his own and the neighbouring countries, which is investigated with great erudition. It was scarcely to be expected that the early anthropologists of Germany and Italy would advance so soon to the polygenist doctrine as the writers who employ the English language, whether in Britain or in North

Di un antico Cranio Fenicio rinvenuto nella Necropoli di Tharros in Sardegna. Memoria del Dottore G. Nicolucci. Torino: 1863.

Memoir on an Ancient Phoenician Cranium, found in the Necropolis of Tharros, in Sardinia.

The merits of the two methods of study have been lately discussed with great discrimination by a competent writer, Dr. Paul Broca, the neverfailing Secretary of the Société d'Anthropologie. Professor Broca, rich in anatomical knowledge, and well versed in the other branches of anthropological science, has established the vast pre-eminency of physical and physiological research. "La linguistique et l'anthropologie", par M. Broca. Bull. de la Soc. d'Anthrop., iii, 264.

America, as it is to those who use this tongue that we are indebted for the most esteemed and most original books on the subject hitherto written. To craniology, Dr. Nicolucci's medical education may be considered to have inclined him, and we entertain the hope that he will, by more especially devoting himself to the study of the anatomical peculiarities among human races, contribute materially to advance the noble science to which he has dedicated his talents with so much success.

The origin of the present Memoir, which may be regarded as an evidence of the author's learning and persevering research, was the acquisition of a calvarium, discovered amid the ruins of the ancient city of Tharros, or Tharras, in Sardinia, accompanied with an engraved stone stele, or tomb-stone, bearing a brief memorial of the deceased in the Phoenician characters. The politeness of the donor of this Phoenician calvarium is commemorated by the author in these terms: "La squisita gentilezza del mio distinto amico cav. Antonio Garbiglietti." Dr. Garbiglietti, himself an accomplished craniologist, exhibited great discrimination in bestowing this precious relic on his friend, whose efforts have tended to illustrate it in so satisfactory a manner.

In the year 1854, Signor G. Cara received an intimation from the Minister of Public Instruction to make further excavations on the site of the ancient city of Tharros, which had previously afforded a rich harvest of objects of antiquity, many of them in gold and silver, an evidence of the importance of this city, and of the opulence of its inhabitants. In the course of his explorations in the necropolis, he came upon the remains of three bodies, which, at the first opening of the tombs, presented an almost entire state. On exposure these were quickly reduced to powder, so that the three calvaria, without their lower jaws, were the only remains Signor Cara was able to preserve. This is greatly to be regretted, as the presence of the lower maxilla is always of the utmost importance in the estimation of the magnitude, the form, and the expression of a skull. Possibly, nay probably, the immediate application of a little spirit varnish would have preserved these essential portions of the face. The other two of these cranial relics are deposited in the Museum of the Royal University of Cagliari, in Sardinia.

Of the ancient city of Tharros itself nothing can be learned from history, neither its founder, nor the epoch of its origin. Two MSS. of the fifteenth century, found, a few years ago, in the archives of Arborea, are considered to have opened the way to the investigation of