each other; they have different speech and manners, and ways of
thinking, and forms of government, and even different looks--for
you can tell them from one another by some peculiarity of
appearance. Yet, in fact, all these nations belong to one great
family--English, and German, and Russian, and French, and
Italian, and Spanish, the nations of the North, and the South,
and the West, and partly of the East of Europe, all came from
one stock; and so did the Romans and Greeks who went before
them; and so also did the Medes and Persians, and the Hindus,
and some other peoples who have always remained in Asia. And to
the people from whom all these nations have sprung learned men
have given two names. Sometimes they are called the Indo-Germanic
or Indo-European race, to show how widely they extend; and
sometimes they are called the Aryan race, from a word which is
found in their language, and which comes from the root "ar," to
plough, and is supposed to mean noble, or of a good family.

But how do we know that there were any such people, and that we
in England are descended from them, or that they were the
forefathers of the other nations of Europe, and of the Hindus,
and of the old Greeks and Romans? We know it by a most curious
and ingenious process of what may be called digging out and
building up. Some of you may remember that years ago there was
found in New Zealand a strange-looking bone, which nobody could
make anything of, and which seemed to have belonged to some
creature quite lost to the world as we know it. This bone was
sent home to England to a great naturalist, Professor Owen, of
the British Museum, who looked at it, turned it over, thought
about it, and then came to the conclusion that it was a bone
which had once formed part of a gigantic bird. Then; by degrees,