When we now picture the four acts of weaving, spinning, sewing, and knitting, they appear so to differ the one from the other, that it seems impossible to consider them other than four distinct acts, and difficult to believe that there is one common origin to all. These four processes, however, all had their germ in the one primitive act of interlacing the boughs of trees to form a hedge or roof. This root _Vê_ (_Vâ_) had an immense number of offshoots; from the acts of interlacing and platting came the conception of binding, in Latin _vieo_, to twist, to divide; in German, _winden_, _wickeln_; the Latin words _vitis_, a vine; _vimen_, osier, a twig; _viburnum_, a climbing plant; the Slavic word _vetla_, willow; the Sanscrit _vetra_, reed, rush; the German word for rush, _binse_, is connected with _binden_, to join, and the secondary meaning of ties of relationship and alliance: again, in the Old High-German, _nothbendig_, or _nothwendigkeit_, bound, straitened, and the Gothic _naudibandi_, tie, chain. All these words, whether in the Roman, German, or Slavonic dialects, have retained the root _Vê_ (_Vâ_), so that it is impossible not to recognise the trunk of which these are the branches. Thus a large number of apparently dissimilar images became entangled the one with the other, and in proportion as we approach their starting-point do we find them discarding their own special signification, and becoming absorbed in the single conception of weaving and platting. The root _mar_, to grind, has also the meaning of to crush, to powder, to rub down, etc., and whether we look at the Latin, Greek, Celtic, German, or Slav, the words representing the verb _to mill_, and the name _mill_ come thence; the transition from _milling_ to _fighting_ is natural; thus Homer used the word _mar-na-mai_, I fight, I pound. _Mar_ produced in Latin the words _mordeo_, I bite; _morior_ (originally, to decay), I die; _mortuus_, dead; _mors_, death; _morbus_, illness; in Greek, _marasmos_, decay; rendered in German by _sich aufreiben_, to become exhausted. In Sanscrit we must remember that the consonants _r_ and _l_ are cognate and interchangeable; thus, _mar_ = _mal_; and that _ar_ in Sanscrit is shortened, and the vowel modified and pronounced _ri_, _mar_ = _mri_; that _ar_ may be pronounced _ra_, and _al_, _la_; _mar_ = _mra_ and _mal_ = _mla_: thus in Sanscrit we find _mrita_, dead; _mritya_, death, and _mriye_, I die. One of the earliest names for man was _marta_, the dying; the equivalent in Greek for the Sanscrit _mra_ and _mla_ is _mbro_, _mblo_; and after dropping the _m_ becomes _bro_ and _blo_; _brotos_, mortal. Having chosen this name for himself, man gave the opposite name to the gods; he called them _Ambrotoi_, without decay, immortal; and their food _ambrosia_, immortality. An offshoot of _mar_ is _mard_ and _mrg_; thence _mradati_, rubbing down, pulverising, grind to powder; _mrid_ is in Sanscrit the word for dust, and afterwards was used for soil