Starting from the facts which I have already quoted from his paper at the close of my chapter on Articulation, he argues that if children will thus spontaneously devise a language of their own in a wholly arbitrary manner, even when surrounded by the spoken language of a civilized community, much more would children be likely to do this if they should be accidentally separated from human society, and thus thrown upon their own resources in an isolated condition. Now, “if, under such circumstances, disease or the casualties of a hunter’s life should carry off the parents, the survival of the children would, it is evident, depend mainly upon the nature of the climate and the ease with which food could be procured at all seasons of the year. In ancient Europe, after the present climatical conditions were established, it is doubtful if a family of children under ten years of age could have lived through a single winter. We are not, therefore, surprised to find that no more than four or five linguistic stocks are represented in Europe, and that all of them, except the Basque, are believed, on good evidence, to have been of comparatively late introduction. Even the Basque is traced by some, with much probability, to a source in North Africa. Of Northern America, east of the Rocky Mountains and north of the tropics, the same may be said. The climate and the scarcity of food in winter forbid us to suppose that a brood of orphan children could have survived, except possibly, by a fortunate chance, in some favoured spot on the shore of the Mexican Gulf, where shell-fish, berries, and edible roots are abundant and easy of access.