[14] Some of the varieties of grain found in these lake-dwellings are not otherwise known to botanists.
[15] The Phœnicians are said by tradition to have invented the manufacture of glass. But there is no proof of this.
[16] Of course the making of very rude huts of branches and leaves may have been practised by these—such huts as formed the only shelter of the Tasmanians down to our day. For an imaginative description of the most primitive house, see Violet de Duc, The Houses of Men in all Ages, ch. i.
[17] The simile is Mr. Max Müller’s.
[18] In English we have grind, grate, (s)cra(pe), grave (German graben, ‘to dig;’ Eng. ‘grub.’) All words for writing mean cutting, because all writing was originally graving on a stone: thus the Latin scribo (corrupted in the French to écris), in the Greek is grapho, in the German schreibe. These words, as well as the English write, are known to be all from the same root; it is not pretended that they are proofs of a natural selection of sound; but they may be instances of it.
[19] The reader, however, may be referred to Tylor’s Early History of Mankind, ch. iv., for much interesting information on the subject.
[20] Yes is probably not the same word as the German ja (whose significant form is lost), though our yea is.
[21] See below, pp. 70-80.
[22] These two words have, it is true, quite changed their meanings; but our knight rose to its honourable sense from having come to be used only for the servants or attendants of the king (in battle), while the German word retained its older sense of servant, groom, only.
[23] See above, p. 66.