It is right and most essential that we should see all this clearly, that we should understand how little evidence we are justified in expecting in support of a common origin of the Semitic and Aryan languages, before we commit ourselves to any opinion on this important subject. I have by no means exhausted all the influences that would naturally, nay necessarily, have contributed towards producing the differences between the radical elements of Aryan and Semitic speech, always supposing that the two sprang originally from the same source. Even if we excluded the ravages of phonetic decay from that early period of speech, we should have to make ample allowances for the influence of dialectic variety. We know in the Aryan languages the constant play between gutturals, dentals, and labials (_quinque_, Sk. +panca+, πέντε, Æol. πέμπε, Goth. _fimf_). We know the dialectic interchange of Aspirate, Media, and Tenuis, which, from the very beginning, has imparted to the principal channels of Aryan speech their individual character (τρεῖς, Goth. _threis_, High German _drei_).[25] If this and much more could happen within the dialectic limits of one more or less settled body of speech, what must have been the chances beyond those limits? Considering how fatal to the identity of a word the change of a single consonant would be in monosyllabic languages, we might expect that monosyllabic roots, if their meaning was so general, vague, and changeable, would all the more carefully have preserved their consonantal outline. But this is by no means the case. Monosyllabic languages have their dialects no less than polysyllabic ones; and from the rapid and decisive divergence of such dialects, we may learn how rapid and decisive the divergence of language must have been during the isolating period. Mr. Edkins, who has paid particular attention to the dialects of Chinese, states that in the northern provinces the greatest changes have taken place, eight initial and one final consonant having been exchanged for others, and three finals lost. Along the southern bank of the Yang-tsï-kiang, and a little to the north of it, the old initials are all preserved, as also through Chekiang to Fuh-kien. But among the finals, _m_ is exchanged for _n_; _t_ and _p_ are lost, and also _k_, except in some country districts. Some words have two forms, one used colloquially, and one appropriated to reading. The former is the older pronunciation, and the latter more near to Mandarin. The cities of Su-cheu, Hang-cheu, Ningpo, and When-cheu, with the surrounding country, may be considered as having one dialect, spoken probably by thirty millions of people, _i.e._, by more than the whole population of Great Britain and Ireland. The city of Hwei-cheu has a dialect of its own, in which the soft initial consonants are exchanged for hard and aspirated ones, a process analogous to what we call _Lautverschiebung_ in the Aryan languages. At Fu-cheu-fu, in the