upon Sanscrit elements. Thus every passive participle may be taken from the Sanscrit, and may, when followed by the Bengali verb haïte, to be, form a passive verb, as krit, done, krit haÿ, I am done. Besides, the Bengali has, like other languages, some compositions by which a passive sense can be expressed, though, grammatically speaking, they are hardly to be considered. as constituting a distinct passive formation. Thus the verbe kháite (to eat) and paite (to get), are of very frequent occurrence, to express in certain combinations a passive idea. Ex. duhkha kháite, to eat pain, to suffer pain, or to be pained; mári kháÿ, he eats or he gets a beating, i. e. he is or gets beaten, pidáte nashța pdivek, he will get destroyed by grief.

So much in answer to Dr. Stevenson, and enough, I hope, to vindicate the origin which I ascribe to the grammatical structure of the Bengali. It would be easy to bring forward a great many forms of this dialect, the Sanscrit origin of which is beyond all doubt, but I think that the mere fact of Dr. Stevenson's not mentioning them in support of his theory, shows sufficiently that he also did not consider them as arising from the language of the aboriginal inhabitants of India.

But now it may be asked, what is the use of these comparisons? what does it matter whether Bengali belongs, by its grammatical structure, to the Indo-Germanic or the Turkish family of languages, provided that a man knows enough of it to express what he wishes? My answer is this: from comparing languages, from finding out analogies between them, from tracing the origin of forms in modern languages down to the living roots of more ancient languages, and from going back, as far as it is allowed to us, to see the first manifestation of human mind by human speech, we derive, I think, a threefold advantage-an historical, practical, and philosophical.

When poetical tradition is silent, when historical records are lost, when physiological researches fail, language will speak and decide whether there has been a community and connection in the intellectual development of different people. One of the most important questions of ethnological philology, which is now pending, the question of the origin and the connection of the Babylonian, Assyrian and Median civilization, art and language, can only be solved effectively by the language of the inscriptions which have been found in the ancient cities of Babylon, Nineveh and Persepolis. It is as if it were by Providence that these monuments have been preserved during many centuries under the protecting veil of the earth, and that they are now discovered at a time when comparative philology has, by the study of the ancient languages of Egypt, Aramea, Persia and India, grown strong enough to master them, and to read in the arrows of these inscriptions the hieroglyphics of the human mind.

But in India too there are still many questions to be answered as far as ethnological philology is concerned. We are generally inclined to consider the inhabitants of this vast country as one great branch of the Caucasian race, differing from the other branches of the same race merely by its darker complexion. This difference of colour has been accounted for by the influence of a climate which has produced a similar change of colour even in those who, like the Portuguese, have settled there only for some centuries. If we look however more attentively at the descriptions which have been given of the physical properties of many tribes inhabiting the west and a great part of the centre of India, some in the mountainous districts of the Vindhya, like the Bhillas, Méras, Kolas, Gondas and Paharias, some even in the northern parts of the Himalaya and Beloochistan, as the Rájís or

Doms and the Brahuís, and others in the interior of the Dekhan, we cannot but admit that we meet here with a different race, which, by its physical and intellectual type, resembles closely the negro. The historical existence of this people we can trace in the Mahabharata as well as in the history of Herodotus, in both of which we find them mentioned in the north and northwest of India, while the existence of the same dark race in the south is authenticated, not only by Indian poems, but also by Strabo.

There is also some difference between the Brahminical inhabitants of the north and the south of India, the latter being rather short in their stature and dark in their complexion, not however so much as not to show still on both sides the noble stamp of the Caucasian race.

But while on physiological grounds we should find no difficulty in admitting those two races as the inhabitants of India, we have still to account for the difference of language which exists between the north and south of this peninsula. If the great mass of the inhabitants of the Dekhan belongs to the Caucasian race, one would expect to find also amongst them a Caucasian or Indo-Germanic language. Instead of this we find that the southern languages are entirely and originally different from the Arian languages spoken in the north, and that they bear, so far as we may judge from the latest researches, a resemblance to the dialects spoken by the savage tribes, like the Bhillas and Gondas, which we considered as having a Cushite origin.

But although these facts may seem contradictory and perplexing, yet these contradictions between the results of physiological and linguistical inquiries may be accounted for and reconciled by the aid of early tradition and history.

When the Arian tribes immigrated into the north of India, they came as a warrior-like people, vanquishing, destroying and subjecting the savage and despised inhabitants of those countries. We generally find that it is the fate of the negro race, when brought into hostile contact with the Japhetic race, to be either destroyed and annihilated, or to fall into a state of slavery and degradation, from which, if at all, it recovers by the slow process of assimilation. This has been the case in the north of India. The greater part of its former inhabitants have entirely vanished at the approach of the Arian civilization; some however submitted to the yoke of the conquerors, and many of these have, after a long period of slavery, during which they adopted the manners, religion and language of their superiors, risen to a new social and intellectual independence. The lower classes of the Hindús consist of those aboriginal inhabitants, and some of them continue still up to the present day in a state of the utmost degradation, living as outcasts in forests or as servants in villages. Some however who came into a closer contact with their masters, by living as servants and workmen in the vicinity of towns, or in the houses of their employers, have intellectually and physically undergone a complete regeneration, so that after three thousand years it would be difficult to trace the Súdra origin of many highly distinguished families in India.

The Arian conquerors of India did not however settle over the whole of Hindustan, but following first a southern and then a south-eastern direction, they left a great part of Western India untouched; and it is there that we find still those aboriginal tribes, which, escaping the influence of the Brahminical as well as afterwards of the Rajput and Mahomedan conquerors, preserve together with their rude language and savage manners the uncouth type of their negro origin. North of the tract of the Arian occupa

tions only few of these Autochthones have been spared, yet some remains of them may be recognised in the tribes of the Rájís or Doms, who live in the mountainous parts of the Himalaya. They all belong to the same widespread people with whom but lately in Gondwana English armies came into hostile contact to prevent their pillage and human sacrifices; and it is curious to see how the descendants of the same race, to which the first conquerors and masters of India belonged, return, after having followed the northern development of the Japhetic race to their primordial soil, to accomplish the glorious work of civilization, which had been left unfinished by their Arian brethren.

Wholly different from the manner in which the Brahminical people overcame the north of India, was the way they adopted of taking possession of and settling in the country south of the Vindhya. They did not enter there in crushing masses with the destroying force of arms, but in the more peaceful way of extensive colonization (áçramas), under the protection and countenance of the powerful empires in the north.

Though sometimes engaged in wars with their neighbouring tribes, these colonies generally have not taken an offensive but only a defensive part; and it appears that, after having introduced Brahminical institutions, laws and religion, especially along the two coasts of the sea, they did not pretend to impose their language upon the much more numerous inhabitants of the Dekhan, but that they followed the wiser policy of adopting themselves the language of the aboriginal people, and of conveying through its medium their knowledge and instruction to the minds of uncivilized tribes. In this way they refined the rude language of the earlier inhabitants, and brought it to a perfection which rivals even the Sanscrit. By these mutual concessions a much more favourable assimilation took place between the Arian and aboriginal race, and the south of India became afterwards the last refuge of Brahminical science, when it was banished from the north by the intolerant Mohammedans. There remain still in some parts of the interior of the Dekhan some savage tribes, never reached by the touch of civilization; yet upon the whole the Arian population, though comparatively small in number, has overgrown the former population, so that physically only few marks of a different blood remain. It is interesting and important to observe how the beneficial influence of a higher civilization may be effectually exercised without forcing the people to give up their own language and to adopt that of their foreign conquerors, a result by which, if successful, every vital principle of an independent and natural development is necessarily destroyed.

The practical advantage of comparative philology is perhaps less evident, because only few have availed themselves of the results of this science, and applied them to the practical study of languages. Every one however knows how difficult it is to learn the first rudiments of a grammar, because all those terminations, suffixes and prefixes, with which our memory is at first overloaded, are to our mind but mere sounds and names, while, by tracing their origin, their historical development, and their affinity with grammatical forms of other known languages, we begin to take some interest in them, and by putting them in connection with other ideas, find it easier to keep them in memory quickly and firmly. Besides, having once acquired the real understanding of any grammatical form, and having put its origin and power into its proper light, we can afterwards dispense with a great many rules which are necessary only from the want of a real understanding of these grammatical forms. These forms once thoroughly understood, we acquire a kind of feeling which

tells us in any particular case how far grammatical elements, in accordance with their primitive power, are able to express different shadows of meaning in the spoken language of a people.

On the advantage which philosophy or science in general derives from comparative philology, I do not venture to add anything after what was so fully and clearly explained yesterday by Chevalier Bunsen, the representative of German science in this country. Language must be consi dered, in its connection with nature and with the human mind, as being the natural expression of every natural impression, as being the higher unity and absolute reality of objective nature and subjective mind. Language stands in the system of the intellectual world as light stands in the system of the physical world, comprising all, penetrating all, and revealing all. There is more indeed to be read in human language itself than in anything that has been written in it.

Fourth Report on Atmospheric Waves. By W.

BIRT ERSITY

In accordance with the resolution adopted at the last meeting of the British Association, I have the honour to report that about thirty sets of observations have been obtained from various stations in the British Islands: the extreme points of the area embraced by these stations are the Orkneys and Jersey in one direction, and Galway and Dover in the other. The observations have been executed with great care by the respective observers, and mostly at the hours named in the instructions. In some cases the observations have been continued through October, November and December; in others, they commence about the middle of October and terminate at the end of November. As instances of the increasing interest manifested on this subject, I have the pleasure to notice that I have been furnished with curves from stations in the North, where the barometric movements have been considered to result from the transit of the great November wave. These curves are referred in each case to the same period, namely, from the 2nd to the 17th of November; and the observers have invariably regarded the regular rise and fall that occurred between these epochs as indicating a well-marked return of the great symmetrical wave.

Observations.-The following Table contains the names of the stations and observers from which observations have been received: it is right to mention that a series of observations was received from Birmingham, but the curve presents so many anomalies, that it has not (except in some minor instances) been employed in deducing any of the succeeding results.

N.B. I am indebted to the Honorable the Corporation of the Trinity House for the Lighthouse observations, and to Rear-Admiral Beaufort, R.N., for the observations made on board the surveying vessels.-W. R. B.