he onomatopoeic theory, but merely that the
same sound represents a different thing to different ears. L. _Boare,
mugire_, E. _moo_; F. _beugler_, E. _bellow_; G. _leuen_, L. _lugere_,
E. _low_, are all attempts at the same sound, or, which would not affect
the question, variations of an original radical _go_ or _gu_. For a
full discussion of the matter, admirable for its thorough learning, see
Pictet, _Les Origines Indo-Europeennes_, Vol. I. Section 86.]

In the case of _crag_, Mr. Wedgwood argues from a sound whose frequency
and marked character (and colds must have been frequent when the
fig-tree was the only draper) gave a name to the organ producing it.
We can easily imagine it. One of these early pagans comes home of an
evening, heated from the chase, and squats himself on the damp clay
floor of a country-seat imperfectly guarded against draughts. The next
morning he says to his helpmeet, "Mrs. Barbar, I have a dreadful cold
in my--_hrac_! _hrac_!" Here he is interrupted by a violent fit of
coughing, and resorts to semeiology by pointing to his throat. Similar
incidents carrying apprehension (as Lord Macaulay would say) to the
breezy interiors of a thousand shanties on the same fatal morning, the
domestic circle would know no name so expressive as _hrac_ for that
fatal tube through which man, ingenious in illegitimate perversion,
daily compels the innocent breath to discharge a plumbeous hail of
rhetoric.

But seriously, we think Mr. Wedgwood's derivation of _crag_ (or rather,
that which he adopts, for it has had other advocates) a very probable
one, at least for more northern tribes. There is no reason why men
should have escaped the same law of nomenclature which gave names to the
_cuckoo_ and the _pavo_.[a] But when he approaches _draff_, he gets upon
thinner ice. Where a metaphorical appropriateness is plainly wanting to
one etymology and another as plainly supplies it, other considerations
being equal, probability may fairly turn the scale in favor of the
latter. Mr. Wedgwood is here dealing with a sound translated to another
meaning by an intellectual process of analogy; and no one knows better
than he--for his book shows everywhere the fair-mindedness of a thorough
scholar--the extreme difficulty of convincing other minds in such
matters. He seems to have been unconsciously influenced in this case by
a desire to give more support to a very ingenious etymology of the word
_dream_. His process of reasoning m