440 NATURAL HISTORY OF 



fields of slaughter, and swarmed during a period com- 

 mencing probably twelve centuries B. C., perhaps when 

 the great inland sea was already much contracted, and 

 the rivers in their way were not yet so greatly ab- 

 sorbed in sand as they are now. 



We observe, in fact, that already at the time of the 

 first Celtic expansion in Gaul, when tribes of that 

 race recrossed the Rhine, 600 years B. C., that Semi- 

 Teutones or Getic tribes, such as the Boii, were among 

 them, and that the movement was occasioned by fresh 

 pressure of similar tribes coming down the north-west 

 coast of Germany tribes that could not be expatriated 

 by any other than enemies of purer Getic race, who 

 were themselves pressed by more of the same, further 

 in the north-east. We have prominent, on the scene 

 of action, the same names of nations, from the high 

 lands of Mongolia to the German Ocean. They con- 

 tinue to roll onwards in waves, retaining their first 

 appellations, till four centuries A. C. In Tahtar, and 

 Chinese and European Chinese annals, they are distin- 

 guished by the names of Kinto Moey, Yuchi, and Yetae, 

 Getae, Scythae, Guti, Guttones, Jotun, Goths, Massa- 

 getas, &c., until they become known by more tribal 

 denominations, such as Gothi, Germanii, Teutones, 

 Xacas, Sacas, Sakya, Sacae : at later periods we find 

 Sueiones, Suevi, Burgundi; and at length they are 

 followed by Sclavonic tribes, which always bear some 

 impression of Ural Altaic consanguinity, notwithstand- 

 ing that in part they are descended from Sacas, who, 



