294 THE ARYAN QUESTION. vi 



dant opportunity for the mixture of races; and 

 for the transference to some of the Fins of more 

 or fewer of the physical characters of the Aryans 

 and vice versa. On any hypothesis, the frontier 

 between Aryan and Finno-tataric people must have 

 extended across west-central Asia for a very long 

 period; and, at any point of this frontier, it has 

 been possible that mixed races of blond Fins or of 

 brunet Aryans should be formed. 



So much for the European people who now 

 speak Celtic, or Teutonic, or Slavonian, or Lithu- 

 anian tongues; or who are known to have spoken 

 them, before the supersession of so many of the 

 early native dialects by the Komance modifications 

 of the language of Home. "With respect to the 

 original speakers of Greek and Latin, the unravel- 

 ling of the tangled ethnology of the Balkan penin- 

 sula and the ordering of the chaos of that of Italy 

 are enterprises upon which I do not propose to en- 

 ter. In regard to the first, however, there are a 

 few tolerably satisfactory data. The ancient 

 Thracians were proverbially blue-eyed and fair- 

 haired. Tall blonds were common among the an- 

 cient Greeks, who were a long-headed people; and 

 the Sphakiots of Crete, probably the purest repre- 

 sentatives of the old Hellenes in existence, are tall 

 and blond. But considering that Greek colonisa- 

 tion was taking place on a great scale in the eighth 

 century b. c, and that, centuries earlier and later, 

 the restless Hellene had been fighting, trading, 



