osen as on
the whole the one best calculated to keep together dictionaries
naturally associated. The languages to be considered are too many for an
alphabetical arrangement, which ignores all relations both natural and
geographical, and too few to require a strict classification by
affinities, by which the European languages, which for many reasons
should be kept together, would be dispersed. Under either system,
Arabic, Persian and Turkish, whose dictionaries are so closely
connected, would be widely separated. A wholly geographical arrangement
would be inconvenient, especially in Europe. Any system, however, which
attempts to arrange in a consecutive series the great network of
languages by which the whole world is enclosed, must be open to some
objections; and the arrangement adopted in this list has produced some
anomalies and dispersions which might cause inconvenience if not pointed
out. The old Italic languages are placed under Latin, all dialects of
France under French (but Provencal as a distinct language), and
Wallachian among Romanic languages. Low German and its dialects are not
separated from High German. Basque is placed after Celtic; Albanian,
Gipsy and Turkish at the end of Europe, the last being thus separated
from its dialects and congeners in Northern and Central Asia, among
which are placed the Kazan dialect of Tatar, Samoyed and Ostiak.
Accadian is placed after Assyrian among the Semitic languages, and
Maltese as a dialect of Arabic; while the Ethiopic is among African
languages as it seemed undesirable to separate it from the other
Abyssinian languages, or these from their neighbours to the north and
south. Circassian and Ossetic are joined to the first group of Aryan
languages lying to the north-west of Persia, and containing Armenian,
Georgian and Kurd. The following is the order of the groups, some of the
more important languages, that is, of those best provided with
dictionaries, standing alone:--

EUROPE: Greek, Latin, French, Romance, Teutonic (Scandinavian and
German), Celtic, Basque, Baltic, Slavonic, Ugrian, Gipsy, Albanian.

ASIA: Semitic, Armenian, Persian, Sanskrit, Indian, Indo-Chinese, Malay
Archipelago, Philippines, Chinese, Japanese, Northern and Central Asia.

AFRICA: Egypt and Abyssinia, Eastern Africa, Southern, Western, Central,
Berber.

AUSTRALIA AND POLYNESIA.

AMERICA: North, Central (with Mexico), South.

EUROPE

Greek.---Athenaeus quotes 35 writers of works, kno