328 Dr Prichard on the Relations of Ethnology 



pean stock. Their affinity to that stock is now generally ad- 

 mitted, though some persons think that their descent is not 

 genuine, and that they spring from an intermixture of an 

 Indo-European with a more ancient aboriginal or perhaps 

 a Finnish speech. In the east of Europe, the Skippetarians, 

 or Arnauts, or Albanians, the descendants of the ancient 

 Illyrians, and Epirots and Macedonians, speak a distinct 

 idiom, which, by Ritter von Xylander, has been proved to be 

 a particular branch of the great Indo-European stem. To.the 

 same stem belong the dialects of the Ossetes in Mount Cau- 

 casus, supposed to be descended from the ancient Avars, and 

 those of the Lesgians, in the same mountainous region, the 

 Armenians, all the Tajiks or real Persians, and, lastly, the 

 Affghans or Patans, who speak the Pushtu, language, and 

 constitute an intermediate branch between the Persians and 

 tlie Indians, more nearly allied, however, to the latter, but 

 still distinct from both. Thus we find the Indo-European 

 family to comprise nations which are spread — 



Omnibus in terris quae sunt a Gadibus usque 

 Aurorara et Gangen. 



2. The dialects which belong to the second great dynasty 

 of languages in both parts of the great continent of the world 

 — for thus we may term Asia and Europe — are not so obvi- 

 ously allied as are those of the former stock. Yet the proofs 

 of their affinity are on the whole sufficiently marked. They are 

 spread abroad more widely even than the former languages, 

 and occupy tracts lying to the northward, eastward, and west- 

 ward, of the Indo-European countries. It is the opinion of 

 many who have investigated these subjects, that the nations 

 who speak dialects of the Ugrian or Tartarian family, were 

 spread over vast regions of the world before the approach 

 of the Indo-European nations, who drove them out towards 

 the north, and east, and west. When the European nations, 

 at a later period, approached them, they retired into the dis- 

 tant parts of Scandinavia, and in the Russian empire, beyond 

 the Valdai Mountains, or the great Uwalli, a chain which 

 divides the waters falling northward into the Baltic and 

 Frozen Oceans, from those which, by a longer course, find 



