GEOGRAPHY AND ANTIQUITIES. 355 



they are also mild and generous in their dispositions. An addi- 

 tional physical character is that, though their nostrils are some- 

 what thick, the nose is much move prominent than in any branch 

 of the North Turanian family at least. Their language, thouijh 

 somewhat modified by intercourse with the Japanese, is peculiar 

 and independent, having no connection with that of any of the 

 neighboring countries, as far as regards the roots of words. The 

 general rules, however, according to which the parts of speech 

 are declined and conjugated, agree with those of their southern, 

 northern, and western Mongolian neighbors, who write their lan- 

 guage syllabicail}', and not ligurativei}', using signs for words, 

 like the Chinese. So that "Here we have an Aryan people 

 speaking a non-Aryan language, and that language peculiarly 

 their own ; not learned from a people who have sulijugated them, 

 or from a people whom they have ^subjugated, at least within 

 2,500 5'ears." This people are rapidly passing away, their num- 

 bers constantly diminishing from the oppression of the Japanese, 

 the rigors of the climate, and the ravages of the small-pox. 



MAMMALIA ASSOCIATED WITH PRE-IIISTORIC MAN. 



According to Mr. Boyd Dawkins, in a paper read before the 

 British Association in 1868, at the time when man first appeared 

 on the earth, the physical conditions of Europe were altogether 

 different from the present. Britain formed part of the main land 

 of Europe, and her fertile plains, covered with the vegetation pe- 

 culiar to a moderately severe climate, stretched far away into the 

 Atlantic from the present western coast line. The Thames also, 

 instead of flowing into the German Ocean, joined the Elbe and 

 the Rhine in an estuar}' opening into the North Sea about the 

 latitude of Berwick. The climate resembled that of Siberia and 

 North America. 



The animals of that vast pleistocene continent, nnder those 

 conditions of life, differed materially from those now living on 

 what are the mere relics of that submerged land. Some of them 

 have entirelj' disappeared from the earth, such as the sa'ore-toothod 

 lion, the cave bear, the Irish elk, the mammoth, the woolly rhi- 

 noceros. Others have gone to the far north, as the reindeer, the 

 true elk, the glutton, the musk sheep; while others, like the cave 

 lion and hytena, have retired to the south, and taken refuge in 

 Africa and Asia respectively. lie considered the i:)re-historic 

 epoch as one of uncertain length, to be reckoned jjerhaps by 

 centuries onh', and perhaps by tens of thousands of years. The 

 remains of the animals that had been carefully sought after in 

 Switzerland and Denmark, had been comparatively neglected 

 elsewhere. He characterized the various periods as follows: pre- 

 glacial period, the rhinoceros Etruscus ; glacial period, boulder 

 clay ; post-glacial, mammoth ; pre-historic, goat, short-horn, or hos 

 longifrons, sheep; Roman occupation, fallow deer. 



Mr. Busk would divide the pre-historic period into two distinct 

 segments, one characterized by the existence of human remains 



