_A._ _The Baltic doctrine._ According to this the Goths migrated from the Baltic to the Maeotis, from the Maeotis to the Euxine, and from the Euxine to the Danube, along which river they moved from _east to west_. {33} _B._ _The Getic doctrine._--Here the Goths are made out to be the aborigines of the Lower Danube, of Dacia, Moesia, and even Thrace; in which case their movement was, also, from _east to west_. _C._ _The German doctrine._--Here the migration is from west to east, along the course of the Danube, from some part of south-eastern Germany, as its starting-point, to Asia Minor as its extreme point, and to Bulgaria (_Moesia Inferior_) as its point of settlement. s. 74. Respecting the first of these views the most that can be said in its favour is, that it is laid down by Jornandes, who wrote in the fifth century, and founded his history upon the earlier writings of Ablavius and Dexippus, Gothic historians, who, in their turn took their account from the old legends of the Goths themselves--_in priscis eorum carminibus, paene historico ritu_. On the other hand, the evidence is, at best, traditional, the fact improbable, and the likelihood of some such genealogy being concocted after the relationship between the Goths of the Euxine, and Germans of the Baltic had been ascertained exceedingly great. s. 75. The second is supported by no less an authority than Grimm, in his latest work, the History of the German Language;--and the fact of so learned and comprehensive an investigator having admitted it, is, in the mind of the present writer, the only circumstance in its favour. Over and above the arguments that may be founded on a fact which will soon be noticed, the chief reasons are deduced from a list of Dacian or Getic plants in Dioscorides, which are considered to bear names significant in the German. Whether or not, the details of this line of criticism will satisfy the reader who refers to them, it is certain that they are not likely to take a more cogent form than they take in the hands of the _Deutsche Grammatik_. s. 76. The third opinion is the likeliest; and if it were not for a single difficulty would, probably, never have been demurred to. The fact in question is the similarity between the words _Getae_ and _Gothi_. The fact that a tribe called G-O-T-H-I should, when they first peopled the Moesogothic country, have hit upon the {34} country of a people with a name so like their own as G-E-T-AE, by mere accident, is strange. English or American colonies might be sent to some thousand places before one would be found with a name so like that of the mother-country as _Get_ is to _Got_. The chances, therefore, are that the similarity of name is _not_ accidental, but that there is some historical, ethnological, or geographical grounds to account for it. Grimm's view has been noticed. He recognises the difficulty, and accounts for it by making the _Goths_ indigenous to the land of Getae.