fort, 1698). The Amharic translation of the whole Bible, executed in Egypt by an Abyssinian monk, Abu Rumi or Ruhh, a native of Gojam, which was revised and published by the British and foreign Bible society (London, 1841), furnishes more valuable material for the study. Isenberg's “Dictionary, Amharic and English, and English and Amharic” (London, 1841), “Grammar of the Amharic Language” (1842), “Amharic Spelling Book,” “Amharic Catechism,” “Amharic Geography,” “History of the Kingdom of God in Amharic,” “Universal History in Amharic,” and “Book of Common Prayer in Amharic,” constitute the principal publications in the language.—Among the other languages related to Ethiopic, none stands as near as the dialect of Tigré. Around it are grouped the Adari, the Affar, the Somauli, and the Saho dialects, and the languages of the Danakils and the Adaiel, and of the district of Harrar. The circle of the languages akin to the Ethiopic is constantly increasing, and indicates an extensive emigration of the Semitic races across the Red sea. These dialects are unimportant. They have no graphic system, and, like all unwritten languages, have undergone numerous changes. The variety of Ethiopic or Abyssinian dialects is perhaps unparalleled.—The best authorities on the languages spoken in the regions of ancient Ethiopia, and of the Ethiopic language in particular, are D'Abbadie, Biot, Dillmann, Franz, Gesenius, De Gobineau, Letronne, Lepsius, Renan, Rigby, Rödiger, Salt, and Schrader. See also König, Vocabulaires appartenant à diverses contrées ou tribus de l'Afrique, in vol. iv. of Recueil de voyages, published by the société de géographie. Other vocabularies of Ethiopic languages will be found in Salt's “Voyage to Abyssinia” (London, 1814), and in Dr. G. Schweinfurth's Linguistische Ergebnisse (Berlin, 1873).
ETHNOLOGY (Gr. ἔθνος, nation, and λόγος, discourse), the science which treats of man as a member of a tribe or nation, and of his culture, morals, and language. It is closely allied to anthropology, which treats of man zoölogically, and of his physical condition and inherent faculties. Ethnology and ethnography are sometimes used indiscriminately, but the former term is more usual. The terms linguistic and descriptive ethnology have recently been introduced to designate the two main branches of ethnological research. The separation of anthropology from ethnology has also been made recently; but in this article they will be considered together. It was formerly required that an ethnologist should not only be a naturalist, but should be familiar with philology or the science of language, archæology or the study of human monuments and remains, and physical geography as far as it relates to climatic and kindred influences on the races. From the difficulties inherent in the subject, the science of ethnology long remained in a very unsatisfactory condition. Now, however, it is considered an entirely distinct science, and anatomy, comparative anatomy, mental and moral philosophy, physiology, psychology, philology, climatology, archæology, and kindred studies form separate divisions of scientific research. Ethnologists and anthropologists confine themselves now to systematizing the results obtained in all and each of these sciences; the latter striving to establish the relation existing between the various types of man for a classification of the human species into races; the former trying to analyze the natural and artificial forms of man in his social relations, in order to detect the forces which cause divergences and analogies among them, and to build thereon a classification of the human race into tribes and nations.—The ancient writers contributed very little to ethnology. Among the Greeks, Herodotus and Xenophon give a faint idea of the ancient populations; among the Latins, Sallust, Cæsar, and especially Tacitus, supply fuller information; yet it is only in comparatively modern times, since the discovery of America, the circumnavigation of the globe, the explorations of Asia, Africa, and the Pacific islands, and the revival of physical and physiological studies, that ethnology can be said to have begun to accumulate the materials necessary for a natural classification of the human races. The most important of the classifications proposed during the last two centuries are the following, most of which, it will be observed, are purely anthropological. Linnæus, in the first edition of his Systema Naturæ, makes four divisions of the genus homo, founded upon the color of the skin, viz.: 1, European, whitish; 2, American, coppery; 3, Asiatic, tawny; and 4, African, black. The divisions proposed by Buffon were five: the Hyperborean (including the inhabitants of the polar regions and of eastern and central Asia, or Laplanders and Tartars), Southern Asiatic, European, Ethiopian, and American. Blumenbach adopted these, changing the names of some of the divisions, and more accurately defining their geographical distribution. He divided mankind into the five classes of Caucasian, Mongolian, Ethiopian, American, and Malay, founded on the combined characters of the complexion, hair, and skull. Before Blumenbach, Camper, a Dutch anatomist, attempted to classify the races by the shape of the skull and the size of the facial angle. Cuvier compares the areas of the cranium and face sawed vertically on the median line from before backward; according to this measurement, the area of the former in the highest races is four times that of the face, in the negro the area of the face being one fifth larger. The norma verticalis of Blumenbach measures the breadth of the skull and the projection of the face, and consists in viewing skulls from behind and above, the eye being fixed on the vertex of each. The comparisons of skulls made by Dr. Morton in his ethnological works are based on
