366 COSMOS. 



general or well established principle, in the division of these 

 groups. The extremes of form and colour are certainly sepa- 

 rated, but without regard to the races, which cannot be 

 included in any of these classes, and which have been 

 alternately termed Scythian and Allophyllic. Iranian is 

 certainly a less objectionable term for the European nations 

 than Caucasian; but it may be maintained generally, that 

 geographical denominations are very vague when used to 

 express the points of departure of races, more especially 

 where the country which has given its name to the race, as, 

 for instance, Turan (Mawerannahr) has been inhabited at dif- 

 ferent periods* by Indo-Germanic and Finnish, and not by 

 Mongolian tribes. 



Languages, as intellectual creations of man, and as closely 

 interwoven with the development of mind, are, independ- 

 ently of the national form which they exhibit, of the greatest 



* The late arrival of the Turkish and Mongolian tribes on the Oxus 

 and on the Kirghis Steppes, is opposed to the hypothesis of Niebuhr, 

 according to. which the Scythians of Herodotus and Hippocrates were 

 Mongolians. It seems far more probable that the Scythians (Scoloti) 

 should be referred to the Indo-Germanic Massagetae (Alani). The Mon- 

 golian, true Tartars, (the latter term was afterwards falsely given to 

 purely Turkish tribes in Russia and Siberia,) were settled, at that 

 period, far in the eastern part of Asia. See my Asie centrale, t. i. 

 pp. 239, 400 ; Examen critique de I'histoire de la G6ogr., th. ii. p. 320. 

 A distinguished philologist, Professor Buschmann, calls attention to 

 the circumstance that the poet Firdousi, in his half mythical prefatory 

 remarks in the Schahnameh, mentions " a fortress of the Alani," on the 

 sea-shore, in which Selm took refuge, this prince being the eldest son 

 of the King Feridun, who in all probability lived two hundred years 

 before Cyrus. The Kirghis of the Scythian steppe were originally 

 a Finnish tribe ; their three hordes probably constitute in the present 

 day the most numerous nomadic nation, and their tribe dwelt, in the 

 sixteenth century, in the same steppe in which I have myself seen them. 

 The Byzantine Menander, (pp. 380-382, ed. Nieb.) expressly states 

 that the Chacan of the Turks (Thu-Khiu), in 569, made a present of a 

 Kirghis slave to Zemarchus, the ambassador of Justinian II. ; he terms 

 her a x^pyc; and we find in Abulgasi (Historia Mongolorum et Tata- 

 rorum), that the Kirghis are called Kirkiz. Similarity of manners, 

 where the nature of the country determines the principal character- 

 istics, is a very uncertain evidence of identity of race. The life of the 

 steppes produces amongst the Turks (Ti Tukiu), the Baschkirs (Fins), 

 the Kirghis, the Torgodi and Dsungari (Mongolians), the same habits 

 of nomadic life, and the same use of felt tents, carded on waggons and 

 pitched amongst herds of cattle. 



