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ignorance prevails, relating to the agglutinative tongues, although these be spoken by innumerable nations in the five parts of the World.
The only circumstance, which may somewhat excuse such a fault, is the lack of literary monuments, that provoke the curiosity and wish to know them.
7.- By reading, sometimes, the best authors on the subject, we have found frequent hypotheses, the ones, suggested by mere logical inductions, the others, based on informations, not well established, and most of them, wanting of every scientific criterium. And although it may seem strange to some, these facts, which came under our observation, have constituted for us the primary motive for writing the present elementary book.
In comparing the grammatical forms and the logical processes of some other languages, with the usages and manners of the common speech of Brasilian savages; we arrived at the well established conclusion, that in the uncultivated language of these people, not only are there found grammatical forms, used regularly and in accordance with logical principles; but also, that the same language offers an evident confirmation of the various hypotheses, which have been ad-
