S4f GENERAL OBSERVATIONS ON THE and language, but the extension and improvement of that art may evidently be traced to one source. The numerals of the more improved tribes are, with few exceptions, and making proper allowance for variation of orthography, the same in all. In all, however, relics of an original enumeration may be discovered. In the less improved, these relics are considerable in the lower part of the scale. In a few, the original numerals continue unaltered so far ; but in the higher, all agree in in borrowing from the same source — from the great Polynesian. * Besides the class of words now alluded to, a very considerable number of the most familiar and or- dinary words of every language will be found the same throughout the more cultivated langua- ges ; such words, for example, as sun, moon, star, sky, stone, earth, lire, water, eye, nose, foot. Hand, blood, dead. The existence of a class of words of this descrip- tion will hardly be explained by any influence short of domination and conquest, or of great admixture, which implies, in that state of society, nearly the same thing. As questions of deep and curious interest, it will occur to ask, — what was the nation whose lan-
- The subject of the numerals will be found discussed
more at length in another chapter.
