3. Of all the Iapetidæ they speak a language nearest in structure to the Sanskrit. It is the latter fact which has given prominence to the Philological Divisions of so important a tongue.
Prominence, too, has been given to their relations in the way of descent, since the denial of the existence of any nations, other than Sarmatian, as occupants of the water-systems of either the Vistula or the Oder, anterior to the tenth century, notwithstanding the numerous statements as to the occurrence of Gothic tribes in the present countries of Mecklenburg, Pomerania, Prussia, Courland, and even Esthonia, is a point to which I have no hesitation in committing myself; a series of papers upon the subject being in the course of delivery and publication, for the Philological Society.
Furthermore, whoever will so far divest himself of his prepossessions as to admit the possibility of the Jute of Jutland, and the Goth of Gothland being something other than Gothic in the usual sense of the term, will find that no provisional hypothesis will explain so many of the difficulties created by the conflicting evidence involved in the terms Jute, Eote, Goth, Reid-Goth, Gaut, &c., as that of an extension of the Lithuanian Vitæ, or Guttones, to the southern parts of Sweden and to Jutland.
I say, Lithuanian Vitæ and Guttones, because whatever may be the value of other supposed applications of the roots Goth-, Jut-, and Vit-, the only families to which any of them have undeniably been brought home as a native name are the Lithuanic.
Besides this, I am so far from attributing either an over-high antiquity, or a preeminent independence of origin to the Scandinavian mythology, that I see in the God Ymer, the Finnic Yumala, and in the Fiorgyn, the Lithuanic Perkunos.
Lastly, the combination k-l-m (as in Kalmar) is not the only geographical root common to the two sides of the Baltic, Lithuanic and Swedish.
Still, the hypothesis is, at present, little beyond a mere suggestion.
b.
SLAVONIANS.
Divisions.—A. Extent.—Chiefly philological. α. Russians. β. Servians, γ. Illyrians. δ. Tsheks. ε. Poles. ϛ. Serbs. ζ. Polabi.