netic changes, and its own new
words. What an opportunity is thus offered for the study of the natural
evolution of language, unfettered by the petrifying art of writing!

In addition to these native dialects there are the various jargons which
have sprung up by intercourse with the Spanish, English, Dutch,
Portuguese, and French settlers. These are by no means undeserving of
notice. They reveal in an instructive manner the laws of the influence
which is exerted on one another by languages of radically different
formations. A German linguist of eminence, Prof. Schuchardt, of Gratz,
has for years devoted himself to the study of the mixed languages of the
globe, and his results promise to be of the first order of importance
for linguistic science. In America we find examples of such in the
Chinook jargon of the Pacific coast, the Jarocho of Mexico, the "Maya
mestizado" of Yucatan, the ordinary Lingoa Geral of Brazil, and the
Nahuatl-Spanish of Nicaragua, in which last mentioned jargon, a curious
medley of Mexican and low Spanish, I have lately published a comedy as
written and acted by the natives and half-castes of that country.

All such macaroni dialects must come into consideration, if we wish to
make a full representation of the linguistic riches of this continent.

What now is doing to collect, collate, and digest this vast material? We
may cast our eyes over the civilized world and count upon our fingers
the names of those who are engaged in really serviceable and earnest
work in this department.

In Germany, the land of scholars, we have the traveller von Tschudi, who
has lately published a most excellent volume on the Qquichua of Peru;
Dr. Stoll, of Zurich, who is making a specialty of the languages of
Guatemala; Mr. Julius Platzmann, who has reprinted a number of rare
works; Prof. Friederich Mueller, of Vienna; but I know of no other name
to mention. In France, an enlightened interest in the subject has been
kept alive by the creditable labors of the Count de Charencey, M. Lucien
Adam, and a few other students; while the series of American grammars
and dictionaries published by Maisonneuve, and that edited by Alphonse
Pinart, are most commendable monuments of industry. In Italy, the natal
soil of Columbus, in Spain, so long the mistress of the Indies, and in
England, the mother of the bold navigators who explored the coasts of
the New World, I know not a single person who gives his chief interest
to this purs