POPULAR MISCELLANY. 



863 



nishes us what we can learn of the primi- 

 tive man, and is gradually bringing us 

 nearer to the epoch when the races started 

 pure. History adds legends and definite 

 movements, records the acts and voyages 

 of antiquity, and discloses the relations of 

 ancient to modern races. The descriptions 

 of the Scythians by Herodotus, of the Ger- 

 mans by Tacitus, of the Goths by Jornandes, 

 of the Anglo-Saxons by Amedee Thierry, 

 are examples of its direct relation. In re- 

 turn, history receives a certain degree of 

 light from anthropology, and the hereditary 

 iniluence of the physiological characters of 

 races plays an important part in the pres- 

 ent order. Linguistics, which should not 

 be confounded with philology, helps to fill 

 the gaps left by history and archaeology, 

 by indicating the passage of a people 

 through a particular region. Deductions 

 should be made from it with careful con- 

 sideration, for they are worth no more 

 than those which may be drawn from a 

 custom, a mythological form, or a funeral 

 rite. A language may advance or retire 

 without involving the question of anthro- 

 pology. We pass for Aryans, because our 

 ancestors spoke an Aryan language ; but 

 that language may have been brought to 

 them from the East by a small, more highly- 

 civilized group. The group disappeared, 

 the language remained with the aborigines. 

 Demography is an anthropological science, 

 related to ethnography. A fourth division 

 might be added, consisting of sciences to 

 be consulted. Among them might be in- 

 cluded geography, as showing the distribu- 

 tion of peoples, and the topographical con- 

 ditions of their surroundings ; comparative 

 law, as illustrating their social and legisla- 

 tive organizations ; architecture and music, 

 which show that all people and races have 

 not had the same sentiments ; sculpture, 

 etc. The studies of anthropology, whose 

 final object is to solve the problems of the 

 evolution of the human race and man's 

 place in nature, begin with analysis, or the 

 examination of particular characteristics. 

 Human characteristics may be arranged, 

 according to their bearing on anthropology 

 and ethnography, in five orders : External 

 physical ti'aits ; internal physical traits ; 

 physiological traits ; pathological traits ; 

 and ethnic traits. The last include all that 



can distinguish one people from another, 

 whether relating to race, surroundings, tradi- 

 tion, or other points. Among them may be 

 indicated polygamy, polyandry, monogamy, 

 burial customs, the Indian custom of scalp- 

 ing, Polynesian tahoo^ the use of bows and 

 arrows and of the boomerang, artificial 

 deformations of the skull, etc. Thus the 

 principal anthropological studies may be 

 said to turn round four centers : the char- 

 acteristic, the type, the race, and the human 

 species. 



The Great Primitive Enropean Sea, 



The theory of the former existence of a 

 great sea embracing the basins of the Black, 

 Caspian, and Aral Seas, has been confirmed 

 by the recent ichthyological investigations 

 of the Russian academician Kessler. This 

 sea in the Miocene period, resting on a bot- 

 tom of Eocene chalk and Jurassic rock, ex- 

 tended over a bed which, beginning in the 

 East with the Sea of Aral, included the low- 

 lands of the Caucasus and the plains of the 

 Pontus, reached Volhynia, Podolia, and Ga- 

 licia, the flats of the lower Danube, Hun- 

 gary, and Servia, and ended in the West be- 

 yond the Vienna basin. This great sea was, 

 at least in the latter part of its existence, 

 brackish, and was connected (though some 

 dispute this), as northern species among 

 the fosils indicate, either through a strait 

 or by overflow, with the Arctic Ocean. The 

 area of the sea was still more extensive in 

 the Eocene period, and in the Jui-assic time 

 it seems to have included all of central Rus- 

 sia and reached to Courland. The separa- 

 tion of the Aral and Caspian Seas from the 

 Black Sea took place very early, probably 

 during the Pliocene age, certainly before 

 the beginning of the last geological period. 

 The connection of the Black Sea with the 

 Mediterranean through the present straits 

 was made considerably later. The separa- 

 tion was accompanied with a decrease in 

 the saltness of the Eastern seas the Black 

 Sea now containing 1"6 per cent,, the south- 

 ern part of the Caspian Sea 1"3 per cent., 

 the Sea of Aral I'l per cent, of salt and a 

 slight modification of their fauna. The fau- 

 na of the Black Sea can not be regarded as 

 an impoverished fraction of that of the 

 Mediterranean, but is of independent origin, 

 consisting of what remains from the primi- 



