12 



VARIETIES OF 



-MAMMALIA. VARIETIES OF MAN. 



amongst which we may notice the Arabs, the Jews, the 

 Moors and the Abyssinians, constitute a great sub- 

 variety, distinguished by certain peculiarities, especially 

 of language ; they are called the Semitic, Aramcean or 



Fig. 1. 



Syro- Arabic races. They are considered by Dr. Latham 

 to form part of the great African variety. 



The remainder of the Caucasian races principally 

 belong to a second great stock that of the Lido- 

 Europeans, including the Hindoos, Persians, and all 

 the European tribes, with the exception of the Magyars 

 of Hungary, the Laplanders, Fins, and other Mon- 

 golian tribes of the extreme north, and the Basques 

 of Spain, the remains of the ancient Iberians, whose 

 affinities are not yet clearly ascertained. These tribes 

 all speak languages which are considered to be derived 

 from the Sanscrit. The true Caucasian tribes, such as 

 the Circassians and Georgians, are distinguished from 

 the rest by peculiarities of language, which would seem 

 to indicate an affinity with the following variety, whilst 

 the appearance of the people, and especially the confor- 

 mation of the skull, caused Blumenbach to regard them 

 as the type of the white races. 



2. MONGOLIANS or TURANIANS. In these races 

 the colour of the skin also varies from the clear 

 white complexion of the fairest Europeans, through 

 various shades of olive, tawny, or even yellow, to a 

 dark yellowish-brown. The skull is rounder than in 

 the European races ; the face is broad and flat, with 

 very prominent cheek-bones ; the eyes are narrow and 



small, with the outer angle drawn upwards, so that the 

 direction of the opening of the eyelids is oblique ; the 

 nose is small and broad, and the lips usually thin. The 

 Mongolian races are distributed over the whole of 1 



Fig. 2. 



northern and eastern Asia, thus including the highly 

 cultivated Chinese, Japanese, and Siamese, the nomadic 

 tribes which wander over the boundless plains of Cen- 

 tral Asia, the Tibetans, the savage hill-tribes of north- 

 ern Hindostan and the Turcomans of Western Asia. 

 The latter are the original stock of the Turks, who have 

 established their rule upon the ruins of the Greek 

 empire. It is to movements in the vast Mongolian 

 populations of Northern and Central Asia, propagated 

 even from the confines of China, that we are to ascribe 

 those devastating invasions of barbarians which ulti- 

 mately destroyed the western Roman empire. Even in 

 Europe, the remains of these conquering hordes are 

 still to be found in the Magyars of Hungary, who only 

 obtained a footing in their present domicile in the tenth 

 century of our era. The inhabitants of Lapland and 

 Finland also, with those of the provinces of Livonia and 

 Esthonia, south of the Baltic, and of a large extent of 

 country in the north and east of European Russia, 

 belong to a Mongolian stock, some of them being pro- 

 bably the aboriginal inhabitants of the districts which 

 they at present occupy ; whilst others have established 

 themselves where we now find them, by displacing 

 other tribes, either of Mongolian or of Caucasian 

 descent. At the north-eastern extremity of the Asiatic 



