304 FORMS OF THE SKULL. 



Asia, and which have generally, but erroneously, been In- 

 cluded, with others of different origin and formation, under 

 the name of Tartars (Tatars) ; whereas the last-mentioned 

 tribes, properly so called, belong to the first division of the 

 human race. The Calmucks and other Mongolian nations 

 which overran the Saracen empire under Zenghis Khan, 

 in the thirteenth century, and had entered Europe, are de- 

 scribed in the Historia Major of Matthew Paris, under 

 the name of Tartars; whereas that appellation, or rather 

 Tatars, properly belongs to the western Asiatics, who had 

 been vanquished by the Mongols. The error, however, 

 arising from this source, has been propagated down to the 

 present day ; so that in the works of the most approved 

 naturalists, as Buffon and Erxleben, wefindthe charac- 



* London, 1686, foL p. 530. The description is contained in a letter sent 

 by an ecclesiastic from Vienna, in 1243, to his archbishop in France, and 

 speaks " de horribili vastatione inhumanae gentis, quam Tartaros vocant." 

 These barbarous hordes had at that time entered Hungary, and penetrated 

 even to Vienna. His description of their corporeal characters corresponds 

 to the portrait which, from Buffon downwards, so many naturalists have 

 drawn of the Mongolian tribes, under the name of Tartars : — 



*' Habent autem Tartari pectora dura et robusta, facies macras et palli- 

 das, scapulas rigidas et erectas, nasos distortos et breves, menfa proeminentia, 

 et acuta, supcriorem mandibulam humilem et profundum, dentes longos et 

 raros, palpebras a crinibus usque ad nasum protensas, oculos inconstantes et 

 nigros, aspectas obliquos et torvos, extremitates ossosas et nervosas, crura 

 quoqjie grossa, sed tibias breviores, statura tamen noibis aquales; quod enim 

 in tibiis deficit, in superiori corpore compensatur." 



Blumenbacii, from whose Second Decade, p. 7, I have borrowed this 

 quotation, observes, '< that the writer obviously speaks, not of the genuine 

 Tatars, but of a people most widely different from them, namely, the Mon- 

 gols or Calmucks, whose only affinity to them consisted in the name by which 

 then, and even now, the two races are improperly confounded. All the 

 characters, therefore, which naturalists have assigned to the Tatars, beloug to 

 the totally different Mongolian race. We know, on the contrary, that the 

 Tatars are a handsome people, conspicuous for the beauty and symmetry of 

 their countenance, as is evinced in the skull here represented (No. 12), which 

 presents a complete contrast to the Mongolian characters of several speci- 

 mens in this collection." 



Further information on the origin of this confusion of names may be pro- 

 cured from J. E. FiscHF.R Conjectural de Gentc et Nomine Taiarornm, in his 

 Quccstiones PeU-opolilance ; also from his Sihirische Gesvhichte, t. 1. 



