thoroughly compared and analyzed, and especially when the establishment of a true scheme of degrees of relationship among the branches shall reduce the doubt now thrown over the primitiveness of a term by its absence from the languages of some among them.
By this kind of research, then, it is found that the primitive tribe which spoke the mother-tongue of the Indo-European family was not nomadic alone, but had settled habitations, even towns and fortified places, and addicted itself in part to the rearing of cattle, in part to the cultivation of the earth. It possessed our chief domestic animals—the horse, the ox, the sheep, the goat, and the swine, besides the dog: the bear and the wolf were foes that ravaged its flocks; the mouse and fly were already its domestic pests. The region it inhabited was a varied one, not bordering upon the ocean. The season whose name has been most persistent is the winter. Barley, and perhaps also wheat, was raised for food, and converted into meal. Mead was prepared from honey, as a cheering and inebriating drink. The use of certain metals was known; whether iron was one of them admits of question. The art of weaving was practised; wool and hemp, and possibly flax, being the materials employed. Of other branches of domestic industry, little that is definite can be said; but those already mentioned imply a variety of others as coördinate or auxiliary to them. The weapons of offence and defence were those which are usual among primitive peoples, the sword, spear, bow, and shield. Boats were manufactured, and moved by oars. Of extended and elaborate political organization no traces are discoverable: the people was doubtless a congeries of petty tribes, under chiefs and leaders, rather than kings, and with institutions of a patriarchal cast, among which the reduction to servitude of prisoners taken in war appears not to have been wanting. The structure and relations of the family are more clearly seen; names of its members, even to the second and third degrees of consanguinity and affinity, were already fixed, and were significant of affectionate regard and trustful interdependence. That woman was looked down upon, as a being in capacity and dignity inferior to man, we find no indication
