FIRST ORDINARY MEETING. 23 
briefly enquire whether what is known from other sources about the 
Aryans is consonant with it. 
It is well-known that philological investigation has established 
that nearly all the European, and some of the more important Asiatic 
languages are descended from a common source, and that these 
are at the same time related to each other in such an intimate 
‘manner and so widely different from all other languages, that scientific 
men feel justified in setting them apart in a family by themselves. 
To this family belong the Celtic, Teutonic, Slavonic, and Romance 
languages, together with the Greek, the Armenian, the Persian, the 
Hindi, and others. The language whence all these have sprung is 
the Aryan, and it follows as an almost necessary corollary, that 
wherever an Aryan language is now spoken, there must be some 
admixture, however slight, of Aryan blood. There is therefore a 
community of speech between all Englishmen and all Hindoos, accom- 
panied by a community of blood between some of each race. 
With the exception of the Aryans of India, the Aryan races are 
white, and, as the sacred books of the Hindoos represent their ances- 
tors as an intrusive race in conflict with dark aborigines, it is fair to 
assume that their present colour is due to an admixture of non-Aryan 
blood, this postulate of course being always granted that climate has 
no appreciable effect upon the colour of a race that has once established 
for itself a separate and distinct type. Butas has already been stated, 
there are two white races, the brunette and the blonde. These are 
intermingled in various proportions in almost every country in which 
whites are to be found. We have seen that the blondes are most 
numerous on the shores of the Baltic and North Seas, and that in 
whatever direction, whether north, south, east, or west one recedes 
from these shores, the proportion of brunettes increases. Now, 
assuming that racial peculiarities are unchanged, except by inter- 
mixture, were the original Indo-Europeans a blonde or a brunette 
"race, or one composed like most of the modern Indo-European nations 
of an intermixture of the two ? 
The following facts seem to show that the original Indo-Europeans 
must have been either purely or largely blonde. There are only three 
Indo- European races, the Hindoos, the Persians, and the Armenians, 
in which no blondes occur, and these occupy countries too far south to 
be the original home of the race, since a variety of evidence shows 
that it must have been situated in a tolerably cold climate. 
