THE NOMAD RACES. 6 1 



Whether the Etruscans, however, were completely 

 ignorant of magnetic polarity is open to question not 

 merely because of the considerations relating to them and 

 already noted, but for another and broader reason; their 

 race connection with the Mongolians. Consideration of 

 this is a natural prelude to the discussion of the alleged 

 Chinese invention of the compass and hence to that 

 of the part which Asiatics have taken in the intellectual 

 rise under review. 



Among the races of mankind which are included in 

 neither the Aryan nor the Semitic nations, there is a 

 group termed the Turanian, which comprises all those 

 which can be philologically proved to have a genetic con- 

 nection, and which therefore constitute a true linguistic 

 family. The most important branch of the Turanians is 

 made up of original inhabitants of the great Asiatic table- 

 land, and in these are included the Finnic, Samojedic, 

 Turkic or Tartaric, Mongolic and Tungusic tribes, or as 

 they are sometimes collectively termed, the Ugric or Altaic 

 nations. 



These people have certain well-marked peculiarities, 

 which distinguish them from all other races. While the 

 Aryan and Semite nations are found inhabiting large areas 

 of continuous territory never separated by any great inter- 

 val from others of their own race, and moving by land by 

 a system of lateral extension, so that they colonize by in- 

 dividuals and families, rather than by tribes or by the 

 migration of an entire community, the Ugrics, on the 

 other hand, present characteristics of an opposite descrip- 

 tion. They are found, so to speak, in isolated patches. 

 There are Finns in Sweden, in Hungary, in Russia, in 

 Persia and in Siberia; Mongols on the Don and Mongols 

 two thousand miles distant on the slopes of the Altai, and 

 congeners on the shores of the Arctic Ocean and on the 

 Bosphorus. These people migrated in bodies with their 

 herds and their flocks. They came upon desired territory 

 and took it by conquest; they multiplied rapidly, and when 



