378 NATURAL HISTORY OF 



society ; and when we also call to our aid the religious 

 doctrines, the ancient poetical records, and the laws 

 and legends of a people, we shall find, in general, suffi- 

 cient data to arrive at epochs in time, often more trust- 

 worthy than the precise years affixed to events, ob- 

 tained "by reckoning backwards certain astronomical 

 facts, or reigns of kings, which chronologists them- 

 selves find means to advance or retard, in order to 

 make them applicable to a favourite theory. Our con- 

 clusions we shall rarely find at variance with linguistic 

 relations, when these are fairly tested by circum- 

 stances. Here we endeavour to trace Man back from 

 known conditions to others anterior to them, but which 

 must of necessity have been in his career, though it 

 may be that they occurred some centuries sooner or 

 later. It is in this manner we find the reasons for 

 assuming, that the Caucasian stock, traced up to the 

 earliest period, was nestling in or above the glens of 

 Hindu-Koosh and the neighbouring mountain ranges ; 

 for there we find it already distinguished in two or 

 three well marked varieties of colour, the swarthy and 

 the fair, and subdivided in several secondary shades, 

 each having homogeneous features, limbs, and intellec- 

 tual capacities. We can even point out the particular 

 geographical localities which several must have occu- 

 pied ; and from what has been stated already in the 

 remarks on the Hindu-Papua tribes, and again on the 

 Caucaso-Mongole or Finnic races, the gradual passage 

 of one typical form to the intermediate. We have, in 

 the remarks upon these subtypical tribes, had occasion 



