DIFFERENCES IN THE EXTERNAL SENSES. 403 



the boundless steppes or plains, and the vapours which rise 

 from and float upon them in warm weather, render things 

 very obscure. Li the expedition which the Torgot Vice- 

 chan Ubaschi led against the Cubanians, tlie Calmuck 

 force would certainly have missed the enemy, if a com- 

 mon Calmuck had not perceived, at the estimated dis- 

 tance of thirty versts, the smoke and dust of the hostile 

 army, and pointed it out to other equally experienced eyes, 

 when the Commander, Colonel Kischinskoi, could discern 

 nothing with a good glass. They pursue lost or stolen 

 cattle or game by the track for miles over deserts. Kirgises 

 or even Russians, in the wild parts of the empire, are equally 

 able to follow and discriminate tracks by the eye. This, 

 indeed, is not difficult on soft ground, or over snow ; but 

 it requires great practice and skill to choose the right out of 

 several Intermingled traces, to follow it over loose sand or 

 snow, not to lose It In marshes or deep grass, but rather to 

 judge from the direction of the grass, or from the depth of 

 the print in snow or sand, how long it has been made *." 



Representations, equally surprising, of the perfection of 

 the senses, are confirmed to us by the most unexceptionable 

 authorities in the case of the North American savages, and 

 of other wild races. 



The dlfiferences of language are as numerous as the other 

 distinctions which characterize the several races of men. 

 The various degrees of natural capacity, and of intellectual 

 progress ; the prevalence of particular faculties ; the nature 

 of surrounding circumstances ; the ease or difficulty with 

 which the different wants and desires are gratified ; will 

 produce not only peculiar characters in the nature and 

 construction of language, but in its copiousness and deve- 

 lopement. 



In the formation of the sound, or voice, and in Its utterance 

 in an articulated form, or speech, no further varieties are 

 observed, than the different combinations of the several 



* Sammlungcn Hhtor. Nachricht. Th. 1. pp. i 00, 10!. 



]> D 2 



