Conestabile, the most eminent of Italian archæologists, has just announced a discovery which throws great light on this question. From archæological evidence alone he has come to the conclusion that there were two races in Etruria. He thinks there was an earlier aboriginal race who practised the cremation of their dead, and who were the subjects or slaves of a later race of conquering Invaders who buried their dead. My own philological investigations entirely support this conclusion. It seems to me that the inscriptions on the cinerary urns, which are usually poor and cheap, can as a rule be best explained by means of the Finnic languages, whereas the inscriptions on the costly sarcophagi contain words more closely akin to the Tataric languages.†

The belief is becoming generally accepted that, before the advent of the Aryans, the whole of Europe was occupied by a race of Turanian aborigines, to whom the Siculians, Pelasgians, Iberians, Ligurians, Aquitanians, and Silures belonged, and whose language is now represented by the speech of the Finns, Lapps, and Basques.

I believe the older race in Etruria belonged to these Finnic or Pelasgic aborigines, who, about ten centuries B.C., were invaded and conquered by a horde of Tatars-the Rasenna or Tursenna,who swooped down on Italy, just as in later times the kindred race of the Huns swept over Gaul and Italy; as the Magyars settled on the Danube plain, already occupied by kindred hordes of Bulgarians, Huns, and Turks; as the Seljuks settled on the Bosphorus, or the Tatars in the Crimea.

Such an hypothesis will explain every difficulty. No other hypothesis has been suggested by which the admitted facts can be accounted for.

The CHAIRMAN.‡-If I may judge from the very close attention with which the paper has been listened to, I have no doubt that I shall do right in at once tendering to Mr. Taylor the thanks of all present for the great pleasure he has given us. I shall now be very happy to hear any remarks which any one may like to make upon the subject.

Lord TALBOT DE MALAHIDE.§-I cannot help expressing the gratification

*For proof that cremation was once universal among the Finnic races, see Donner, Vergl. Wörterb., p. 106.

+ We have, for instance, two sorts of decades in -thrum and -lechl, one Tataric, the other Finnic in type. The Tataric decades have as yet only been found on costly sarcophagi, obviously the resting-places of wealthy nobles. Again, the words THUI and LUPU seem nearly synonymous, both meaning mortuus est. The first, a Finnic word, is usually found on cinerary urns, the second, a Tataric word, on sarcophagi.

Rev. Robinson Thornton, D.D., Vice-President. § President of the Royal Archæological Institute.

with which I have listened to the interesting and learned lecture which has just been delivered, and from which, I am sure, we have all derived a great amount of information. The subject of the Etruscan language and the history of the Etruscan people form one of the most interesting, as well as one of the most obscure questions with which we have to deal. As Mr. Taylor has told us, a vast number of theories have been propounded on the subject, and some of them have been of a most absurd character. There is no language on earth to which the Etruscan language has not been affiliated at one period or another. Even the country to which I belong, Ireland, has been one of those which has claimed close relationship with the Etruscans. A learned friend of mine wrote a very elaborate work, in which he proved, to his own satisfaction, that every Etruscan inscription could be interpreted by appealing to Gaelic or to Erse sources. He analyzed several very interesting inscriptions, and among the rest that long inscription which has been shown to us by Mr. Taylor, and which, whether it is strictly Etruscan or not, is, no doubt, one of the earliest inscriptions which have been found in Italy, and must have considerable analogy with the Etruscan. After fully considering that inscription, he came to the conclusion that it very clearly indicated that it contained sailing directions for entering the port of Wexford. (Laughter.) This shows that a person may ride a hobby to death; and the case has been very similar with a number of other people who have taken up the subject. But of recent years Archæology has become somewhat more of an exact science; clearer reasoning has been applied, and induction has been brought to bear upon a larger range of facts connected with the subject. Certainly our advancing knowledge of Philology has been one of the matters which have been of the greatest possible assistance to us in determining the origin of many nations, and I trust that it may prove so in the case of the Etruscans. I do not profess to have gone into the details, and I have never seen the cubes or dice which Mr. Taylor has brought under our notice tonight, although I have heard a great deal about them. It would therefore be very presumptuous on my part to attempt to criticise, or to enter into any minutia in reference to these deep philological questions. Certainly the facts mentioned by Mr. Taylor with reference to the decades and to the mode of numeration are very strong and plausible; and I think that is one of the strongest arguments for pronouncing the Etruscan to have been a Turanian language. Mr. Taylor did not mention whether, among the Turanian languages which he had compared with the Etruscan, he had compared the Basque.

Mr. TAYLOR.-There are faint traces of the Etruscan in the Basque, which is distinctly related to the Finnish. I will show you the comparative nearness of the Basque and Etruscan. The first of the Etruscan numerals-mach, one "-you get in the Siberian languages, as muk, "one." In the Basque you cannot get so near; the nearest you get is bat, "one." No doubt it is the same word, but the letters have changed very much. We know that the m and b were interchangeable, and that the letter t would sometimes interchange

with k. But we have in Basque the word beatz, a finger; and beatz is nearer to mach than bat. I spent several months in trying to connect Etruscan with Basque; but I found the Finn was very much nearer than the Basque.

Lord TALBOT DE MALAHIDE.-No doubt the Finnic nations spread over a great portion of Europe before the Celts and the rest of the Germanic nations; and if there is any relationship between the Basques and the Etruscans, it would be a most important fact to be made acquainted with. I suppose nothing has been known of the Ligurian language?

Mr. TAYLOR.-About half a dozen words, and two of them are decidedly Basque.

Lord TALBOT DE MALAHIDE.-How about the Oscan?

Mr. TAYLOR. That is closely akin to Latin.

Lord TALBOT DE MALAHIDE.-Those inscriptions at Pompeii can be read? Mr. TAYLOR.-Yes.

Lord TALBOT DE MALAHIDE.-There is a suggestion which I should like to make with reference to these cubes. Are they loaded, or are they made to be loaded?

Mr. TAYLOR.-I do not know whether they have been played with, but they are very large, very heavy, and of pure ivory.

Lord TALBOT DE MALAHIDE.—If they had been loaded, or intended to be loaded, that would have been a criterion by which you could have ascertained where the highest number was.

Mr. TAYLOR.-I did not notice. I had them in my hand nearly an hour, but I did not observe whether there was any loading in them or not.

Lord TALBOT DE MALAHIDE.-With reference to the mortuary inscriptions, have you satisfied yourself that they merely express the years of the age of the deceased persons, because in the Roman inscriptions the months and days are generally given as well.

Mr. TAYLOR.-I pointed out one that I thought might contain the days or weeks.

Mr. F. A. ALLEN.-This is a very interesting discovery, because it appears that all the civilized countries of antiquity were really Turanian in origin. It appears, through the medium of our discoveries, as if civilization had been handed down by the races which we now call Turanian. It has been observed by writers that the Etrurian year agrees, within eight or ten minutes, with that of the Aztecs in America; and there are several other points of identity which are curious, and which are shown by Mr. Hyde Clarke's discoveries in reference to the antiquities and inscriptions in America, and also Accadian inscriptions. If the Etruscan is shown to be Accadian, we establish a bond of union between the Old World and the New. Mr. O'Brien, the learned editor of a work called Phanician Ireland, was once "twitted" by some one who said, "You might as well say the Phoenicians got to America." To which he replied, "Well, 'Algonquin' means in Phoenician noble people,' or 'noble race,'-a title which has very often been arrogated by tribes both savage and civilized." These things are valuable, as pointing to the unity of mankind,

and they may be very cognate to the questions discussed before us. I have always thought, from the close connection of the Egyptian and other civilizations with the Etruscan, that it must be Turanian in origin, although it has been asserted on high authority that it was Semitic, or even Aryan.

Rev. G. CURREY, D.D.-In connection with this very interesting subject, I may refer to an instance in which the Etruscans are brought into contact with another people. We all know that the Romans derived from the Etruscans their arts of divination. We find in Ezekiel an account of Nebuchadnezzar casting lots and making divinations before he marched against Jerusalem, and we are told "he made his arrows bright, he consulted with images, he looked into the liver" (Ezek. xxi. 21), evidently practising the arts of divination common among the Turanians, and by them introduced into Rome. Now the Chaldean arts of divination seem to have been derived from the old inhabitants, the Accadians. And so, when we find the Chaldeans practising these arts in the same way as the Etruscans, we have a curious point of contact between the Etruscans and Chaldeans.

Mr. TAYLOR.-M. Lenormant has brought out these facts very forcibly in his essay on the magic of the Chaldeans, showing that their magic was the magic of the Finns.

A MEMBER. I should like to draw attention for a moment to the striking figures which have been referred to by Mr. Taylor, and which are in the British Museum. I believe these figures to be worth many books, and certainly their character shows something very similar to the Chinese or Mongolian type. They show a great length of foot and slightness of body and arms and legs. I should be glad if Mr. Taylor could give us his views in reference to them.

Mr. TAYLOR. This touches on a remarkable point which I should have mentioned myself, had it not been for fear of exceeding the limits of the time at our disposal. One of these figures is that of a man of extreme old age and emaciation, which accounts for its slightness. It represents, moreover, a man whose body had not been burned, but buried, and, therefore, he ought to be one of the Tartaric rather than of the Finnic stock. Here, as well as in that portrait of the Etruscan warrior which I have shown you, you have great obliquity of the eyes and height of the cheek-bones; and I should take one as an example of the conquering, and the other of the conquered race. In the later Etruscan portraits you have a greater approximation to the Greek and Roman type of figure. These Mongol features have absolutely vanished from the Turks of the present day, through their intermarrying with Aryan women. The Osmanli have lost their characteristics, just as the Hungarians are losing them.

The CHAIRMAN.-I have listened to Mr. Taylor's paper with a double pleasure; not only because it is a valuable philological and ethnological Essay, but also on account of its logical value. I was much delighted with the way in which the inductive method was put before us. We have been shown by the most complete induction, and by a comparison of resemblances

and variations made in the most careful and convincing manner, how it was that the language of the Etruscans must be identified with the speech of the Turanian races, and with no others. I think the paper is very valuable as a logical exercise, and also because it asserts most distinctly a hypothesis which I have adhered to for some years. I always thought that the Etruscan would turn out to be Finn, and I am glad to find that Mr. Taylor has arrived at that conclusion. When I began to study philology, the Finn hypothesis was sneered at by some savants, but it is now declared to be an indisputable fact. There is a peculiar word used of this people; Diodorus says, "They call themselves Rasena." Now we find the Finns speaking of themselves, and of their equally Turanian neighbours, as "Suomalainen" and "Rossolainen"; and thus we find the root of "Rasena" (the Latin Rhoxolani) in a Finn word. Considerations of this kind inclined me much to adopt the Finn hypothesis. It is necessary to justify the introduction into our Transactions of a paper like the present, and that justification I was prepared to offer, but Mr. Taylor has done it for himself. Before I conclude, I should like to ask Mr. Taylor one question, on a subject mentioned by Dr. Lepsius; and that is, whether there are any remains of Etruscan roots in the language of the Grisons in the Alps.

Mr. TAYLOR.—With regard to the name of Rasena, I think it can be philologically shown that the Etruscans were closely related to the Accadians, and in the tenth chapter of Genesis we find that two of the cities that were built were called Accad and Resen. As to the remains of the Etruscans in the Grisons, a scientific commission was sent out to try and find Etruscan words, but it met with no marked success. I do not think Dr. Steub's work carries much conviction. No doubt there are some resemblances, but they are very feeble, and we cannot tell what the Etruscan words are. In the Grisons a glacier is called käse, and that word, I believe, is the name for a snow-covered mountain in Lapp.

A vote of thanks to the Society of Arts for the use of their room brought the proceedings of the session to a close.