All this work has formed the basis of study for everybody who has had occasion to learn the language since, although such an undertaking has always entailed a new and personal effort to work out the grammar and compile a local vocabulary. For all students of Eskimo, including the present writer, find a variety of dialects, although generally it may be said that the language varies so inconsiderably from one region to another, that hunters from widely different parts of the arctics can soon—by mutual questionings—understand each other. Those in Greenland speak practically the same tongue as those in Alaska. Apropos of the purely etymological aspect of this little known language, it is interesting to recall an observation made by Dean Farrar in a lecture before the Royal Institution, delivered in 1869. “I hardly hesitate to prophesy,” he said, “the extreme probability that the final answer to many high scientific problems regarding the nature and the origin of man may come from enquiries into the languages of nations such as these (the Chinese, Eskimo and Cherokee) rather than from any other branch of ... palaeontological research.” Eskimo has indeed received some measure of study and analysis, and it is for grammarians to tell us whether or no this prophesy has been to any extent fulfilled. A French writer, M. Hovelaque, hesitates to answer any question as to what group of human language the “hyperborean” tongues should be assigned. His observations should be recorded here perhaps, by way of a commentary on the exhaustiveness with which the Germans seem to have gone into the subject: “Au surplus le nom d’hyperboréennes ou arctiques, sous lequel on réunit ces differentes langues, ne doit pas donner le change sur le plus ou moins d’affinité soit entre elles, soit avec autres idiomes. Bien des hypothèses sont encore permises à ce sujet, mais il est vraisemblable qu’un certain nombre de ces idiomes résisteront à toutes les tentatives que l’on pourra faire en vue de les laisser parmi tel ou tel groupe suffisament connu. Il serait dangereux, en tout cas, d’accorder aux relations des missionaires sur telle ou telles de ces langues, notamment sur celles des Esquimaux, plus de crédit qu’il ne convient. On n’y trouve, le plus souvent, que des rapprochements de mots, des etymologies; en somme rien de scientifique. Ajutons, d’autre part, que certains idiomes hyperboréens ont été étudiés avec soin et par des auteurs compétents, ainsi qu’on peut le voir dans les publications de l’Academie de Petersbourg.” (La Linguistique. Bibliothèque des Sciences contemporains.)