304 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



The space at my disposal will not permit me to discuss the aeti- 

 ology of this disease, but I may say en passant that the specific infec- 

 tious agent, or germ, of the disease has not yet been demonstrated 

 in a satisfactory manner, although claims to its discovery have been 

 made. 



My subject is too extensive to be treated in a single paper, and I 

 am unable at present to consider many important infectious diseases 

 of man and of the lower animals. Among these I may mention as 

 especially important the malarial fevers, pulmonary consumption, 

 pneumonia, leprosy, the diseases due to animal parasites of various 

 kinds, those due to parasitic fungi other than the bacteria, contagious 

 ophthalmia, etc. Among the most important infectious diseases 

 of the lower animals, some of which may be transmitted to man by 

 inoculation, are anthrax, glanders, hydrophobia, symptomatic an- 

 thrax or " black leg " of cattle, Texas fever of cattle, the surra disease 

 of India, the tsetse-fly disease of Africa, fowl cholera, etc. 



■♦•» 



THE EACIAL GEOGRAPHY OF EUROPE. 



A SOCIOLOGICAL STUDY. 



(Lowell Institute Lectures, 1896.) 

 By WILLIAM Z. EIPLEY, Ph. D., 



ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF SOCIOLOGY, MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY ; LECTURER IN 

 ANTHROPO-GEOGRAPHY AT COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY. 



XII.— THE ARYAN QUESTION. 



IN" our school days most of us were brought up to regard Asia as 

 the mother of European peoples. We were told that an ideal 

 race of men swarmed forth from the Himalayan highlands, dissemi- 

 nating culture right and left as they spread through the barbarous 

 West. The primitive language, parent to all of the varieties of 

 speech — Romance, Teutonic, Slavic, Persian, or Hindustanee — 

 spoken by the so-called Caucasian or white race, was called Aryan. 

 By inference this name was shifted to the shoulders of the people 

 themselves, who were known as the Aryan race. In the days when 

 such symmetrical generalizations held sway there was no science of 

 physical anthropology; prehistoric archeology was not yet. Shem, 

 Ham, and Japhet were still the patriarchal founders of the great 

 racial varieties of the genus Homo. A new science of philology daz- 

 zled the intelligent world by its brilliant discoveries, and its words 

 were law. 



We have no time to trace here in detail the revolution of opinion 



