32^ Dr Prichard on the Varieties 



on both sides of the great Ouralian chain, which separates the 

 north of Europe from that of Asia. Many of these nations are 

 distinguished for flat faces and red hairs, in which characters 

 they are contrasted with the Tartars. Their language unequi- 

 vocally separates them from that people. 



"But still less can the Tartar or Turkish nation itself be 

 identified with the other members of the supposed Caucasian 

 'race. It has never been pretended that any affinity subsists be- 

 tween the language of the Tartars and the Indo-European na^ 

 tions. The dialects of the Tartar tribes are not much varied ; 

 all the clans belonging to this great nation, though spread far 

 and wide, and reaching from Constantinople to the Irtisch and 

 Lena, speak one language. 



" Every thing that we can collect as to the ancient history of 

 the Tartar nation, seems to run counter to such an hypothesis. 

 The only ground, indeed, on which it is pretended to associate 

 the Tartars with the European, or, as they are termed, Cauca- 

 sian nations, is the fact that the skulls of the Turks have a form 

 which belongs to the European type. But even this is by no 

 means universal. Many of the Tartar nations approach nearly 

 to the Mongoles and Kalmucs in their features, and in the 

 shape of their heads ; and this is particularly the case with those 

 branches of the Turkish stock who have long been settled in 

 the north of Asia, in climates inhabited of old by people to 

 whom the Mongolian characters were, from early periods^ ap- 

 propriate. These deviations from the more general traits of the 

 Turkish race, and approximations to those of the Mongoles, are 

 attributed by writers who maintain the permanent transmission 

 of physical characters to intermixtures of race. But this is alto- 

 gether gratuitous. If we may judge of the purity of race by 

 purity of language, the Yakuts, who inhabit the shores of the 

 Lena, must be considered as of unmixed Turkish race. Their 

 speech, as M. Julius Klaproth has proved, is nearly that of the 

 Osmanli themselves; and it has been said that a Turk of Stam- 

 boul would be understood among the Yakuts on the Lena. 

 Probability is in favour of the opinion of Blumenbach, that a 

 long residence in the chmate of North-eastern Africa has changed 

 the features of the race. The language of the Yakuts, being 

 unmixed, we may be allowed to infer from this circumstance 



