6z 4 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



minating in the mountain fastnesses of northern Albania and the 

 vicinity. On the whole, we find also in this trait of brunetness com- 

 petent evidence to connect these Illyrians with the great body of the 

 Alpine race farther to the west. We have another illustration of 

 its determined predilection for a mountainous habitat, in which it 

 stoutly resists all immigrant tendencies toward variation from its 

 primitive type. 



The Osmanli Turks, who politically dominate the Balkan Pen- 

 insula, notwithstanding their numerical insignificance, are mainly dis- 

 tinctive among their neighbors by reason of their speech and religion. 

 Turkish is the westernmost representative of a great group of lan- 

 guages, best known, perhaps, as the Ural-Altaic family.* This com- 

 prises all those of northern Asia even to the Pacific Ocean, together 

 with that of the Finns in Russian Europe. Its members are by no 

 means unified physically. All varieties of type are included within its 

 boundaries, from the tall and blond one which we may call Finnic, 

 prevalent about the Baltic; to the squat and swarthy Kalmucks and 

 Kirghez, to whom we have in a physical sense applied the term Mon- 

 gols. The Turkish branch of this great family of languages is to-day 

 represented in eastern Europe by two peoples, whom we may roughly 

 distinguish as Turks and Tatars, f The term Tatar, it should be ob- 

 served, is entirely of European invention, like the similar word Hun- 

 garian. The only name recognized by the Osmanli themselves is 

 that of Turk. This, by the way, seems quite aptly to be derived from 

 a native root meaning " brigand," according to Chantre. They 

 apply the word Tatar solely to the north Asiatic barbarians. By 

 general usage this latter term, Tatar, has to-day become more specific- 

 ally applied by ethnologists to the scattered peoples of Asiatic descent 

 and Turkish speech who are mainly to be found in Russia and Asia 

 Minor. 



Of the two principal physical types to-day comprised within the 

 limits of the Ural-Altaic languages, the Turks and Tatars seem to be 

 affiliated with the Mongol rather than the Finn, not physically alone, 

 but in respect of language as well. As a matter of fact, they are racial- 

 ly nearer the Aryan-speaking Europeans than most people imagine, in 

 everything except their speech. Their nearest relatives in Asia seem 

 to be the Turkoman peoples, who, to the number of a million or more, 

 inhabit the deserts and steppes of western Asia. It was from some- 

 where about this latter region, as we know, that the hordes of the 



* Vambery, 1885, divides the Ural-Altaic family into five groups — viz., (1) Samoyed, 

 (2) Tungus, (3) Finnic, (4) Mongolic, (5) Turkish or Tatar. 



f On terminology consult Vambery, 1885, p. 60; Chantre, 1895, p. 199; Keane, 1897, 

 p. 302. 



