Note 42-* — CONCLUSION

“In ethnology however one troubles oneself little with the detail of linguistic structure. It is held quite sufficient to gather from different peoples and collate a couple of hundred vocables, into whose actual nature all insight is lacking, and then upon dubious, often purely superficial and apparent similarities, to deduce linguistic affinities. Or else, as is now most in fashion, the claims of linguistic research towards the solution of ethnological questions are reduced to a ‘most modest share’ in comparison with other fields ‘somewhat more in line with natural sciences’—meanwhile pointing for justification to the absurdities set forth as the results of too far-fetched linguistic deductions.... The errors and sophistries charged against ethnological linguistics are rather an accidental result of the individuality of single investigators, than essential to the subject. They are at least scarcely greater than those to the credit of recent Anthropometry. A brief glance at the strange changes of opinion in the latter field during the last three decades, in spite of all its boasted figures, shows how little ground it has to throw stones. Serious students, such as Wallace and Dall, whose critical ability in Zoomorphology no one can deny, and who do not rest content with a few skulls of doubtful provenance, gathered à la Hagenbeck, have come to a wholly negative view of the value of Craniometry.”—Dr. Otto Stoll, Maya-Sprachen der Pokom-Gruppe, I, vii, ix.