THE ARYAN QUESTION AND PREHISTORIC MAN. 341 



Cards Majoris and the exceedingly beautiful star-curves in the 

 neighborhood of Alpha Persei, both of which are figured in my 

 Astronomy with an Opera-glass. No one can survey the heav- 

 ens with any kind of an optical instrument for half an hour with- 

 out discovering many similar instances. If it should ever be 

 demonstrated that the individuals composing these star-rows 

 have all an identical parallax, or, in other words, are all at the 

 same distance from us, so much additional strength would be 

 given to the argument that they owe their origin to a nebula 

 which resembled in shape the figure that they mark out. But 

 the inherent probability that the stars concerned in such cases 

 really do have practically the same parallax is so great that 

 actual measurement could hardly make it stronger. 



Looking at the matter still more broadly, it is clear that the 

 Milky Way itself may be regarded as the starry residuum of a 

 far grander nebula even than that of Orion, which once com- 

 pletely encircled our heavens ; while the origin of such stellar 

 streams as we behold in Eridanus, Pisces, and other constellations 

 having their stars comparatively widely separated and few in 

 number, may be referred to smaller nebulous masses once scat- 

 tered over the region of space included within and extending on 

 each side of the plane of the galactic circle. 



THE ARYAN QUESTION AND PREHISTORIC MAN. 



By Prof. T. II. HUXLEY. 



THE rapid increase of natural knowledge, which is the chief 

 characteristic of our age, is effected in various ways. The 

 main army of science moves to the conquest of new worlds slowly 

 and surely, nor ever cedes an inch of the territory gained. But 

 the advance is covered and facilitated by the ceaseless activity of 

 clouds of light troops provided with a weapon always efficient, 

 if not always an arm of precision the scientific imagination. It 

 is the business of these enfants perdus of science to make raids 

 into the realm of ignorance wherever they see, or think they see, 

 a chance ; and cheerfully to accept defeat, or it may be annihila- 

 tion, as the reward of error. Unfortunately, the public, which 

 watches the progress of the campaign, too often mistakes a dash- 

 ing incursion of the Uhlans for a forward movement of the main 

 body ; fondly imagining that the strategic movement to the rear, 

 which occasionally follows, indicates a battle lost by science. 

 And it must be confessed that the error is too often justified by 

 the effects of the irrepressible tendency which men of science 

 share with all other sorts of men known to me, to be impatient 



