TRANSACTIONS OF THE SECTIONS. 117 



On some Changes of Surface affecting Ancient Ethnography*. 

 By H. H. HowoRTH. 



In this paper the author claimed to prove that the accounts given by Pliny and 

 the other Koman geographers, of the physical conformation of Scandinavia, namely, 

 that it was then an archipelago of large islands, has been abundantly sustained by 

 the evidence collected by Swedish observers since the seventeenth century, by the 

 minute inspection madeiu 1833 by Sir Charles Lyell, and by subsequent investiga- 

 tions, which evidence is to the effect that the whole of the land north and north- 

 east of Stockholm is rising rapidly, and that the Baltic is becoming more limited 

 in area every day. This area of elevation has been extended by many observers 

 into Central Asia, where the Caspian within the historic period has receded enor- 

 mously, the former conjunction with it of the sea of Aral being only a very limited 

 index "of this depletion. From these facts the author deduced the conclusions, — 



First, that the rhetorical expression of '' the northern hive " is more than ever 

 an exaggeration, and that we must look elsewhere for the cradle of the great ma- 

 jority of invading peoples who overturned the Roman empire. 



Secondly, that the tilling up of a large area in Southern and Centi-al Asia with 

 sea and marsh in ancient times must affect the positions of its races as given in 

 orthodox geographies, and oflers a suggestive field for those who, like himself, are 

 interested in the causes of the continuity and the idicsyncracies of the Indo- 

 European family. 



On the Origines of the Norsemen. By H. H. HowoRTHf. 

 The author held the view of Hallam and others to be imtenable, namely, that 

 the sudden eruption of Norsemen into western Europe, and their ferocity, were 

 due to the Saxon wars of Charlemagne, which sent many of the chieis of that race 

 beyond the limits of Germany, and in revenge of which they afterwards returned 

 to be the scourge of all Europe. The only explanation of the many peculiarities of 

 the Norsemen is to be found in the fact of their having been but late immigrants 

 into the area whence they emerged so powerfully and so suddenly. Their own 

 traditions, their epics and war-songs contain no allusions to such a tempting and 

 suggestive subject as the wars of Charlemagne. After passing in review all that 

 could be found in classical wi-iters bearing on the subject, the author believed that 

 the balance of e%'idence was in favour of identifying the Norsemen with the Rox- 

 elani, literally " red-haired men," and that these were the same as the Sarmati, 

 who have been erroneously considered to be a Sclavonic nation. 



The Ethnography of the French Exhibition, as represented by National Arts. 



By Mrs. Lynn Linton. 



The author considered that, apart from all question of commercial value or 

 social gain, the Exhibition had at least one feature of undoubted importance, 

 namely, its ethnological material, which is singularly rich both in amount and 

 suggestiveness. Every variety of art is to be seen, from the rude works of the 

 savage, whose finest ideas are embodied in a necklace of shells, a mask of tattoo, 

 or a temple of skulls, through the intermediate grades of the semicivilized making 

 their first efforts, up to the latest productions of European skiU. The archaeo- 

 logical gallery of the Exhibition leads us by successive stages from the primitive 

 conditions of the lake-dwellers to the complex life of modem times. The work of 

 each nation, even in the department of jewellery, has a distinctive character of its 

 own, evidencing the peculiar habit of thought and intellectual status of the race. 

 The European, with all his science, cannot come near the exquisite grace of the 

 unlearned Hindu or the wandering Kurd. There is a strongly marked dissimi- 

 larity of intention in Eastern and Western work. There is no national life, no 

 public meaning in anything that comes from the East. It is all small and indi- 



* Thi3 paper will be printed at length in the Transactions of the Ethnological Society 

 for 1868. 



t This paper is printed at length in the Transactions of the Ethnological Society for 



1867. 



