There is evidence, too, that this north-western group, comprising as it did the ancestors of the Greeks and Romans, as well as of the Celts, Teutons, and Slavs, had reached before it dispersed a new country of forests, such as must have covered most of Northern and Western Europe at that time. At any rate we find words for trees—such as _beech_, _elm_, and _hazel_—and for birds—_finch_, _starling_, _swallow_, _throstle_—common to most of the languages spoken by their descendants, yet absent from Persian and Sanskrit. It was at this time, and amid these surroundings, that agriculture seems to have appeared among the north-western Aryans. The old Aryan word from which we have _acre_ lost its former meaning of ‘any enclosed piece of land’ and acquired the new and special significance of _tilled_ land, as in the Latin ‘ager,’ etc. _Corn_, _furrow_, _bean_, _meal_, _ear_ of corn, and the verb to _mow_ also date back to this period of our history. And then the north-western stream again subdivided; and we will follow first of all that branch of it which dropped away southward into the Balkan peninsula and the islands of the Aegean. This time it is not a word, but a poet’s imagination which has fixed for us in a passage of considerable beauty the historic moment when this wave first lapped the farther shore, the prophetic shock of contact between Aryan settler and aborigine: Then fly our greetings, fly our speech and smiles! As some grave Tyrian trader, from the sea, Descried at sunrise an emerging prow Lifting the cool-haired creepers stealthily, The fringes of a southward-facing brow Among the Aegean isles; And saw the merry Grecian coaster come, Freighted with amber grapes, and Chian wine, Green bursting figs, and tunnies steep’d in brine; And knew the intruders on his ancient home, The young light-hearted Masters of the waves....