limits within which to search. The theory of indefinite time is unfathomable and yields no ore. We are compelled, in the next place, to compare living Dravidic with dead Aryan forms. Had we the dead Dravidic we could attain some accuracy, perhaps; but the popular speech that survives cannot be taken for the popular speech of four thousand years ago. It must be remembered, too, that it is not a case of Ariovistus receiving, not giving, hostages; for Aryan must have modified Dravidic in the process of receiving modifications. What, then, if the very facts of coincidence were the result of Aryan influence upon Dravidic? What is it that authorizes us to assume that the Dravidic sounds stood, before the Aryans came, as they now stand thousands of years later? It is an effort to measure the unseen shadow of one moving cloud by that of another projected from the same skies a thousand years later. One part of the theory is perfectly sound, that which assigns pathological facts to contacts with other tongues, and when history has told us what these tongues were we can know; till then we must be content, and the scholars are content, to search, following every lead of hypothesis and fainting not, however many may yield no precious ores. Indeed, none can be altogether empty; and the small dust swept together will make ingots of precious gold. The evil is that the scholar's hypothesis is the rhetor's truth; Ascoli guesses, and pursues his guess with a temperate enthusiasm. Some careless rhetor calls the guess a discovery, and boils over with excess of heat. It would be well if rhetors and theorists would leave linguistic scholars to complete their tasks in peace; and we may all take it for granted that discovering the foundations of human history is not the office of this branch of research.

It has been carelessly assumed that the interjectional and imitative theory of the origin of language opens a vast depth of time under the growth of speech. It is pure assumption. If we know any thing about imitative processes in sounds, we know that they defy all theories of a rate of progress. The process is now going on, and has always been going on, in a narrow region of speech. Supposing that from that narrow base all the rest has sprung, we cannot guess how long the distance may be between an imitation of a cry and the loss of all notion of imitation in the modified word. If Tennyson still

writes "clouds did transe the sky," and the word trance takes hold on Latin uses of transire to mean death-the old literal and the more modern refined use subsisting side by side-what law of progress from material to intellectual meanings can we hope to discover? If this movement is so subtle, how can we hope to make a time-space between an imitative sound and a derivative of it that has no hint of imitation? But in point of fact, the imitative theory is only an ingenious hypothesis, incapable of demonstrative proof, or of those rational inferences which are often accepted in place of demonstration. It cannot be said that it accounts for all the facts; it might be stretched to account for a hundredth part of them, but other facts reject the explanation. At some early period men began to use devices in their speech. They distinguished different meanings by variations in musical accent, by graduated vowels, by consonantal change. The slender capacities of imitation would cease to be relied upon when the devices of the intellect began to be used, and all existing non-imitative language probably sprung from these devices. It is only conjecture that imitation ever sufficed one generation of our ancestors; it is as reasonable to believe that imitation is now just what it always has been-that is, one only of the modes in which men convey their impressions. We must go outside of language for a basis of the imitative theory. A theorist draws out upon a time-chart a set of ages of stone, iron, bronze-a scheme of human arts-and infers that the speech of his first men was a meager set of cries because he has arbitrarily endowed them with an imperfect and obstructed intellectual activity. His "ages His "ages" are fanciful creations, and his notions about the intellectual caliber of early men are simply gratuitous. If one chooses to believe him, there is no law against such a mighty exercise of faith; but none of the facts lend the least support to the theory. At last it is a question of the "smartness" of Adam and his children. Assuming that they had no experience, how bright, quick, inventive, were they? The primeval man of an immeasurable antiquity is a dreadfully dull and slow fellow, and his antiquity rests upon that assumption about his intellect. Nothing that we know authorizes us to teach that generation after generation passed away before any of the devices of the brain entered into the forma

tion of words. Just so soon as one device-a vowel variation, for example, (as ba, bo, bu)—had been, however accidentally, invented, it would naturally expand in use. Other devices, when hit upon, would also grow. The vowel device seems about as easily formed as the imitative one. Indeed, imitation would produce vowel change, and even a dull brain would probably notice it very soon. It should be noticed that a "smart" man at last turns up in these everlasting-growth theories. A Cadmus must be had. Will any one suggest a reason, based on lingual facts, for waiting ten thousand or fifty thousand years for him? There is absolutely nothing in language to suggest an indefinite, but vastly long, age of men too obtuse of ear to notice the variation of natural sounds, and too slow of invention to use vowel variation. We should reject the imitative theory, except as a possible first lesson in sounds; it is not the base under existing human speech-this rises upon a simple set of devices fabricated out of the simplest capacities of the voice.

Much higher up, language is a question of intellectual culture. The speech of Milton never exists among savages-they have no use for it. The law may be reasonably extended to the earliest times-in fact, theorists unconsciously apply this law to primeval life. A miserable, degraded, dull-eyed, and thick-headed autochthon needs only to bawl and screech. But be good enough to admit that even such an autochthon would notice the difference between bawling and screeching, and that when he had, however unconsciously, noted the difference, he would screech for one purpose and bawl for another. His first lesson in imitation would in this process be transformed into the use of a vocal device-the brain of this imaginary autochthon would have taken charge of the speech-making process. Who shall prove that early men were such autochthons? Who shall prove that they could not tell the difference between bawling and screeching? Who shall make us certain that their growth, keeping pace with their needs, did not produce all the intellectual devices which lie at the base of simple words?*

*The student may profitably consult "Lessons from Nature," by St. George Mivart, chapter iv, and Mr. Tylor's "Primitive Culture." I am not aware, however, that any writer has made before me the point that imitative language must have been in man a schoolmaster in vocal devices.

ART. II.-RECENT ORIGIN OF MAN.

[SECOND ARTICLE.]

The Recent Origin of Man, as Illustrated by Geology and the Modern Science of Prehistoric Archaeology. By JAMES C. SOUTHALL. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott

& Co. London: Trübner & Co. 1875.

THE MAMMOTH.

CHAPTER XX is devoted to a great number of interesting facts about the mammoth, showing its comparatively recent date. Mr. Prestwick, the celebrated English authority, though still desirous to keep up a high antiquity for man, says: "I do not, for my part, see any geological reasons why the extinct mammalia should not have lived down to comparatively recent times, possibly not farther back than eight or ten thousand years." And in another place he remarks, that "the evidence seemed to me as much to necessitate the bringing forward of the great extinct animals toward our time, as the carrying back of man in geological time."

Mr. Southall has gathered in chapter xx a large collection of facts about the relations of extinct animals in general, and the mammoth in particular, to historic times. He copies from the Smithsonian works the sketch of the big Elephant Mound of Grant County, Wis., which seems to show that the mound builders had a knowledge in some way either of the elephant, the mastodon, or the tapir. Some of the discoveries detailed, though appearing in reputable scientific publications, are distrusted or discredited by scientific men. The connection of human and mastodon relics near Charleston, S. C., is one case. The deposits here are so thin and superficial that it is very dif ficult to be sure that there is no mixture of different ages, the more so, as the bones of the ordinary ox and the domestic hog are found also, neither of which were ever indigenous to this continent, and must, therefore, be specimens introduced by the modern settlers.

Mr. Southall, in common with many others, quotes the alleged discovery of human relics in Missouri, by Dr. Kock, when he exhumed the great mastodon now in the British Museum, and whose account of finding the bones, and the flint arrowhead under one of them, is current among European scientists as good authority. It has long been known to western

scientific men that Dr. Kock, through a good collector of specimens, was grossly ignorant of strict science, and, what is worse, utterly reckless of truth in his statements. The ground where he found the skeleton is totally different from what he stated; the thirteen or fourteen feet of different strata described, as overlying the skeleton, have no existence whatever, it being found close to the surface in swamp muck. The men who assisted him in exhuming it say the pit was not drained nor bailed out; but they worked up to their waists in water, groping at the bottom for the bones in such a way as to give no chance to know whether an arrowhead belonged to the time of the bones, or fell in while working.

More recently the "American Journal of Science" has analized Koch's pamphlets, and exposed their recklessness and ignorance. Professor Hoy, of Wisconsin, years ago exposed the falsity of the statements before the Chicago Academy of Science. Mr. Southall seems inclined to think that the mammoth survived later than the Pluvial Period, which may be true in some regions. One of the most singular discoveries bearing on this point is detailed in chapter xxxiv, taken from M. Desor's account of Siberian antiquities in the Matèriaux pour l'Histoire de l'Homme, 1873. The relics

Consist of a number of articles in bronze obtained by a Russian engineer, M. Lapatine, from the Tartars in the neighborhood of Krasnojarsk, on the southern frontier of Siberia. The objects mentioned are two poniards, two hatchets, six knives, a pair of scissors, a file, a bridle bit, and five buckles. Most of these articles are coated with a beautiful brown patina; others are covered with a green patina, similar to that observed on the antiquities found in the ancient European tombs. Their antiquity, we are told, is beyond question. They are far superior to, and entirely different from, the utensils and weapons in use among the Tartars; they have nothing in common with the classic forms, nor with those of the prehistoric epochs of Europe; nor are they Chinese nor Hindu. That they are the product of an indigenous civilization seems to be confirmed by the tombs, which are found in great numbers on the banks of the Yenisei, and which Pallas refers to an ancient people no longer in existence, but whose culture is attested by a funeral mobilier quite complete, which is composed in part of the same objects as those under consideration.

After stating that many of these bronzes represent very elegantly various animals, as the fox, eagle, etc., Mr. Southall