jasper receives tacit assent. If, however, it was the earlier Indians who used argillite, and gradually discarded it for the various forms of flint, then we ought to find workshop sites older than the time of flint chipping, and others where the two minerals are associated. This, as has been stated, has not been done. Negative evidence this, it is admitted, but when considered in addition to the positive evidence of position in undisturbed soil, it has a value that must not be overlooked. Sufficient positive evidence to clear away all doubt in the minds of many, of the presence of an earlier people than the Indian on the Atlantic seaboard of America will probably never be forthcoming; yet, to the minds of candid inquirers, there is a degree of probability in the interpretation of known facts that closely hugs the bounds of certainty.

This briefly covers the range of evidence, first, that palæolithic man did not become extinct; secondly, that his descendants attained to an advanced degree of culture in the land of their forefathers. What then was this people's subsequent career? Were it not for the three skulls, to which reference has been made, we could still maintain that we have their descendants in the Eskimo, and that they were finally driven north, after contact with the Indians, who, as is conceded by all students, migrated hither, at, archæologically considered, a not exceedingly remote period. The Indian traditions assert that they found the region occupied; and for once, at least, we have evidence which confirms tradition.

However others may be impressed by what I have now presented, for myself, as I wander along the pleasant shores of the Delaware river, seeing it but a meagre stream between high banks, in midsummer; or, in winter, swollen and choked with ice, until these are almost hidden, I recall what time this same stream was the mighty channel of glacial floods pouring seaward from the mountains beyond and picture the primitive hunter of that ancient time, armed with but a sharpened stone, in quest of unwary game. And later, when the floods had abated and the waters filled but the channel of to-day, I recall that more skilful folk who with spear and knife captured whatsoever creature their needs demanded, — the earlier and later Chippers of Argillite.

These pass; and the Indian with his jasper, quartz, copper and polished stone looms up, as the others fade away. His history, reaching forward almost to the present, I leave in the hands of others to record.

PAPERS READ.

AN INTERNATIONAL LANGUAGE. BY HORATIO HALE, Clinton, Ont., Can. THE great inventions of our century, which have brought all civilized nations into such near communion,— the steamship, railway, telegraph, and telephone, require one essential complement. The closer the intercourse between populations speaking different languages, the more the need of some common medium of communication is felt. The sense of this need is naturally not so strong in America as elsewhere; but every traveller in Europe, every mercantile house with foreign connections, and almost every student of science or art, must experience the embarrassment caused by the variety of languages prevailing in the Old World. Since the era of international exhibitions and congresses for all purposes, scientific, philanthropic, political, and artistic, began, this embarrassment has increased so greatly, that many minds have been turned to the discovery of some means of relief.

The first public manifestation of this sentiment has come from a scientific source, entitled to the highest respect. In January last, the American Philosophical Society, of Philadelphia, adopted by unanimous vote a resolution requesting their President to address a letter to all learned bodies with which the Society is in official relations, and to such other societies and individuals as he might deem proper, "asking their coöperation in perfecting a language for learned and commercial purposes, based on the Aryan vocabulary and grammar in their simplest forms; and to that end proposing an International Congress, the first meeting of which shall be held in London or Paris."

Letters have been issued in accordance with this resolution, and there can be little doubt of a favorable response. The initiative proceeds from the oldest of American learned societies, founded by Franklin nearly a century and a half ago, and numbering on its roll of notable presidents Thomas Jefferson, the most scholarly of American statesmen, and Peter S. Duponceau, the father of American philology. This historical prestige and the very large membership, comprising many of the most eminent scholars in both hemispheres, can hardly fail to ensure a favorable reception of its present proposal. No international jealousy can possibly be aroused by the action of an American society, asking for a meeting in Europe.

The President's letter is accompanied and seconded by an able report from a Committee (Messrs. Brinton, Phillips and Snyder) appointed to consider the subject. The report will be everywhere read with interest,

though some of the views expressed in it will probably arouse discussion. The Committee maintain that inflections are relics of barbarism, and that an uninflected (or, in scientific phrase "analytic") language is better adapted than an inflected speech for the expression of thought. This view, it seems, was strenuously opposed by other distinguished scholars in the Society, who preferred the more usual opinion that inflected (or "synthetic") languages evince in their framers a higher mental capacity than appears in the uninflected idioms. But all the members, without exception,-whatever might be their views on this purely theoretical point, — agreed in holding that an artificial language, designed to be a medium of communication among persons speaking many different languages, should be made as simple and easy as possible, both in pronunciation and in grammar, a proposition which seems too plain to call for argument.

The Committee, it appears, was appointed in the first instance" to examine into the scientific value of Volapük,”—the "world-speech," of which so much has been lately heard,— an artificial idiom, constructed about ten years ago by the Rev. Johann Martin Schleyer, a learned priest of Baden. The Committee found in this invention "something to praise, and much to condemn." In fact, its merits and its defects lie on the surface, and are evident to any one familiar with the structure of language and with the need for which such an invention is required. As a distinguished English philologist, Mr. A. J. Ellis, has well observed, Volapük "presents a schoolboy's ideal grammar, there being only one declension, one conjugation, and no exceptions." Indeed, if the object of the invention were to relieve the much-suffering schoolboy of the troubles caused by the monstrous absurdities in the structure of the European languages, the preposterous orthography of English and French, the nonsensical gender-systems of the continental tongues, the torment of the irregular verbs in all the languages, -Volapük would be everything that could be desired. But while avoiding this obvious Scylla of irregularity, the inventor has been led by his great linguistic ingenuity to plunge into an equally disastrous Charybdis on the other side, a fatal whirlpool of philological complexities. At the outset, we are met by a gross and surprising error in his alphabet,—an error so evident that the able American interpreter of his system, Mr. Charles E. Sprague (author of a “Handbook of Volapük”), is obliged fraukly to admit it. The inventor is not content with the five "pure vowel sounds,"-the a, e, i, o, u, as they are heard in German and Spanish,- sounds which are familiar and easy to every speaker of every European language, and which, with fourteen or fifteen equally universal consonants, would afford an abundant supply of euphonious words for the amplest vocabulary. He introduces besides, in frequent use, the three German impure vowels ä, ö, ü, easy to him as a German, but to most speakers of other tongues difficult and perplexing. The first and most elementary rule of an international speech evidently should be that no sound, or combination of sounds, should occur in it which is not common to all the leading commercial languages of our time.

But the reason of the introduction of so many vowels soon makes itself

apparent. The author had determined to depart altogether from the analytic system of modern European tongues, and to revert to the ancient synthetic structure. He would have inflections of all sorts,-cases, tenses, moods, formative prefixes and suffixes,- every complication which his strong linguistic faculty and that "study of more than fifty languages" which his admiring biographer ascribes to him could suggest. Thus the personal pronouns, I, thou, and he,― in Volapük, ob, ol, and om,— do not, as in most European tongues, stand independently before or after the verb; they are made inflections and suffixes. Löf, for example (a word derived from the English verb, and in pronunciation midway between "luff" and "loaf"), is love, and löfob, löfol and löfom,are "I love, thou lovest, he loves." This, we know, was the way in which the Aryan verb was originally constructed, the t in the Latin amat and the German liebt, and the s in the English loves, being relics of an ancient personal pronoun. But thousands of years have passed since any consciousness of this derivation survived. Having reopened this primitive and long-forgotten path, the learned inventor proceeds resolutely forward in it. He gives us, in his imperfect tense, the Sanskrit and Greek augment, and employs for his purpose one of his German vowels, ä, having a sound approaching that of the a in hat; älöfom is "he loved." Then he goes beyond his models, and forms his remaining tenses by other vowel augments. The perfect tense is elöfom, he has loved; the pluperfect, ilöfom, he had loved; the future, ölöfom, he will love; the future perfect, ulöfom, he will have loved. The passive voice prefixes p, and so we get in the future perfect passive, pulöfom, he will have been loved. The conditional mood ends in öv, and the potential in ox; and thus we have elöfomöv, he would have loved, and löfomox, which a doubting damsel would need for expressing "he may possibly love." Then there is a reflexive form in ok, löfomok,-he loves himself,— and a frequentative form, made by inserting an i after the augment, and indicating a habit of action — äilöfom, he was in the habit of loving. Here we begin to discern the real models which the author of this extraordinary composition has followed. The aboriginal American tongues, with their numerous and apt derivative forms, which have charmed Duponceau, Max Müller, Whitney, and many other noted philologists, have naturally attracted so good a philologist as Mr. Schleyer. He goes on to give us their well-known method of word-formation. He takes bits of modifying words, makes prefixes and suffixes of them, and sticks them on the "stem words," in a fashion which would delight an educated Iroquois or an Ojibway. From smalik, small, he makes a prefix sma-, and joining this to bed, which has its English meaning, we get smabed, meaning nest. From gletik, great, we derive gle-, which, added to zif, town, gives us glezif, great city. From län, country, he makes a suffix -än, and so we get Bayän, Bavaria, and Kanadän, Canada.

These specimens show sufficiently the class of languages to which Mr. Schleyer's invention belongs. The Committee of the Philosophical Society incline to rank it with the "agglutinative" tongues of Northern Asia; but it is something more and better than one of these. It is really what philologists style a "polysynthetic" language, of the American class, combining agglutinate and inflective forms in a great number and variety. To say