is of a very simple kind.  That two nations use calabashes or shells for drinking-vessels, or that they employ spears, or clubs, or swords and axes of stone and metal as weapons and implements, cannot be regarded as evidence that these two nations had a common origin, or even that intercommunication ever took place between them; seeing that the convenience of using calabashes or shells for such purposes, and the advantage of poking an enemy with a sharp stick, or hitting him with a heavy one, must be early forced by nature upon the mind of even the stupidest savage.  And when he had found out the use of a stick, he would need no prompting to discover the value of a chipped or wetted stone, or an angular piece of native metal, for the same object.  On the other hand, it may be doubted whether the chances are not greatly against independent peoples arriving at the manufacture of a boomerang, or of a bow; which last, if one comes to think of it, is a rather complicated apparatus; and the tracing of the distribution of inventions as complex as these, and of such strange customs as betel-chewing and tobacco-smoking, may afford valuable ethnological hints.

Since the time of Leibnitz, and guided by such men as Humboldt, Abel Remusat, and Klaproth, Philology has taken far higher ground.  Thus Prichard affirms that “the history of nations, termed Ethnology, must be mainly founded on the relations of their languages.”

An eminent living philologer, August Schleicher, in a recent essay, puts forward the claims of his science still more forcibly:—­

“If, however, language is the human [Greek:  kat ezochhen], the suggestion arises whether it should not form the basis of any scientific systematic arrangement of mankind; whether the foundation of the natural classification of the genus Homo has not been discovered in it.

“How little constant are cranial peculiarities and other so-called race characters!  Language, on the other hand, is always a perfectly constant diagnostic.  A German may occasionally compete in hair and prognathism with a negro, but a negro language will never be his mother tongue.  Of how little importance for mankind the so-called race characters are, is shown by the fact that speakers of languages belonging to one and the same linguistic family may exhibit the peculiarities of various races.  Thus the settled Osmanli Turk exhibits Caucasian characters, while other so-called Tartaric Turks exemplify the Mongol type.  On the other hand, the Magyar and the Basque do not depart in any essential physical peculiarity from the Indo-Germans, whilst the Magyar, Basque, and Indo-Germanic tongues are widely different.  Apart from their inconstancy, again, the so-called race characters can hardly yield a scientifically natural system.  Languages, on the other hand, readily fall into a natural arrangement, like that of which other vital products are susceptible, especially when viewed from their morphological side....