ANTHROPOLOGY. 



by Germans, were apparently Slavonic within the 

 historic era. 



3. The Mediterranean or Classic stock, com- 

 prising the ancient Greeks and Romans, with 

 their modern representatives. The modern Greeks 

 speak a language far closer to ancient Greek than 

 any modern tongue is to Latin. How far their 

 blood is pure Hellenic, it is difficult to say. The 

 blood of the modern Italians is in the main of 

 Roman descent, with Gothic admixture. The 

 Romans, along with their language and civilisa- 

 tion, contributed important elements to the popu- 

 lation of the Spanish peninsula and to France. 

 Distinct traces of Rome also remain among the 

 Swiss of the Grisons and the Walachians. The 

 peoples, therefore, speaking Italian, Spanish, 

 Portuguese, French, Romane (Walachia), and 

 Rumonsch (Grisons), are classed as Romanic. 

 The affinities of the ancient tribes inhabiting 

 these countries are in many respects unsettled. 

 The close relation between the Greek and Latin 

 tongues has always been felt. Dr Latham brings 

 them together geographically by making the Hel- 

 lenes emigrants from the south of Italy. 



Dr Latham dissents from the opinion that 

 classes Persians, Afghans, and even Hindus, with 

 Europeans, but it is generally received by students 

 of language and ethnologists. That opinion rests 

 on affinities of language, and arose about the be- 

 ginning of the present century in the study of 

 Sanscrit. Sanscrit is the language in which the 

 religious books of the Hindus are preserved, and 

 is of great antiquity. Its similarity in structure 

 to Greek and Latin is so striking, that it was 

 maintained at one time to be a factitious or arti- 

 ficial language, constructed by the Brahmins on 

 the model of the Greek, for the purpose of giving 

 an air of mystery and sanctity to their religious 

 records. But this theory did not long stand 

 examination. Striking coincidences had pre- 

 viously been pointed out between Greek, Persian, 

 and German. The subject was taken up by the 

 scholars of Germany, who are specially qualified 

 for such a research ; and the affinity of Sanscrit 

 and Persian, not only with Greek and Latin, and 

 their descendants, but with the other principal 

 languages of Europe Slavonic, Lithuanic, and 

 all the Germanic languages, including English 

 soon became a received doctrine. It was gener- 

 ally admitted as beyond doubt that all these 

 languages must have had a common origin, and 

 might, therefore, be fitly designated a family, to 

 which the name of Indo-German was given, as 

 indicating its extremities. The Celtic of Wales, 

 Ireland, and Scotland, continued for some time to 

 be looked upon as foreign to this family as the 

 remains of the primitive language of Europe before 

 the arrival of the Indo-German races. It was 

 reserved for Dr Prichard to vindicate more re- 

 cently the claims of the Celtic dialects to be 

 numbered in the sisterhood. This he is allowed 

 to have successfully done ; so that Indo-European, 

 instead of Indo-German, is now thought by many 

 to be the more appropriate name for the group. 



Along with the affiliation of tongues went that ol 

 the peoples speaking them ; and the modern lan- 

 guages of Northern India (Hindustani, Bengali, 

 &c.), being held descended from Sanscrit, as 

 Italian is from Latin, and those of Persia similarly 

 related to the ancient Zend a form very similar 

 to the Sanscrit Hindus, Afghans, and Persians 



were classed as eastern cousins of the European 

 nations. To account for the connection, the 

 European branches of the family were assumed 

 to have migrated from the East before the historic 

 )eriod a migration to which many traditions are 

 )elieved to point. 



The diversity of appearance in language, 

 eatures, and physique, found in the existing 

 European descendants of the great Aryan, or 

 ^ndo-Germanic stock, is, as we have said, due to 

 the fact, that the Aryan race did not find Europe 

 empty when it came to it. The Aryans not only 

 subdued the European autochthones (aborigines 

 or primitive people), but intermixture took place 

 jetween conqueror and conquered, and as the 

 atter may have consisted of a great many varieties, 

 he diversities noticeable in the present inhabitants 

 of Europe are easily accounted for. Indeed, pre- 

 listoric investigators tell us that before the Aryan 

 nvasion, in the Stone Age, there must have been 

 at least two different races in Europe : a race with 

 skulls longer than they were broad (dolichoceph- 

 alic), that inhabited the shores of Provence ; and 

 a race with skulls broader than the former (brachy- 

 cephalic), inhabiting Scandinavia. The Basques 

 and the Finns have skulls which are respectively 

 dolichocephalic and brachycephalic, like those of 

 ;he European autochthones, and they are the 

 only two nations whose languages shew not the 

 remotest affinity to other European languages, or 

 o the Sanscrit. They are thought to be the last 

 races of the primeval human fauna of Europe, 

 which was swamped by the tide of Aryan migra- 

 tion from the East. 



III. GENERAL ANTHROPOLOGY. 



PHYSICAL PECULIARITIES. 



Skin, Hair, and Eyes. 



The skin varies much in colour and texture in 

 different races from the pale reddish brown of 

 the 'white' or Xanthochroic races to the black 

 tint peculiar to the Negro. The true skin is the 

 same in all races. The cuticle or scarf-skin, which 

 covers it, varies according to the amount of pig- 

 ment deposited in the flattened epidermal cells of 

 which it is composed. The pigment is formed in 

 the deeper layer of the cells of the cuticle, some- 

 times called the rete mucosum. Exposure to 

 solar heat is the most popular explanation of the 

 coloration of the skin, but it cannot be shewn that 

 there is any absolute relation between this and 

 the amount of skin pigment. Dark-skinned races 

 exist in the cold arctic regions ; and though in the 

 Old World we find a gradual darkening of the 

 skin occurring as we proceed southward from 

 Northern Asia, yet in the New World we find an 

 almost unvarying shade of dusky brown pre- 

 vailing amongst the aborigines, through every 

 variation of temperature and climate from the 

 icy regions of Hudson's Bay to the sun-dried 

 Pampas of South America. In corresponding 

 latitudes in Africa, we find the natives not brown, 

 but black. Some have tried to explain this by 

 saying that Africa is an older continent than 

 America, and that its inhabitants, having been s 

 much longer exposed to extreme solar heat, have 

 consequently become proportionately darker m 

 colour. If this theory were reliable, we should 

 have in colour a valuable indicator of the relative 



