TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION H. 283 



Khan. And it may be expedient to try, first of all, to throw ethnological light 

 upon the last great racial re-grouping, which, occurring in the time of Jinghis 

 Khan, may be said to persist to our own day. 



Our existing classification for Eastern Europe and North and Central Asia, 

 while professedly ethnological, is based on historical rather than ethnological 

 data. Thus the Asiatic peoples nearest to the iSlavs are called ' Ural-Altaic' 

 because they all crossed the Altai and the Urals on their way to Europe; and 

 in this grouping are included five ' races ' — Finnic, Turkic, Tungusic, Samoyedic, 

 and Mongolic — who are said to be linguistically alike but, otherwise, to form 

 separate races. But the ' Mongolic race ' cannot be shown to form a distinct 

 group in the same sense as the other four ; and its appearance in the same 

 rank with Turks and Finns is due to the ethnologists' imcritical adoption of 

 the history of the Jinghis Khan period. History, however, when used critically 

 helps us to define the real position of the IMongols. Ethnologically they form 

 a bridge between the Tungus and the Turks, originating as they do in a 

 mixture of those two races on the steppes of Mongolia. Hence it is misleading 

 to speak of a 'Mongolian type,' since there never was an original Mongolian 

 type as there was a Tungusic or a Turkic type. 



In tJie same way — by the uncritical adoption of historical data into ethnology 

 — another misleading term, ' Tatars,' has come to rank almost as a racial 

 definition ; whereas it is simply a name of Tungusic origin for a clan which at 

 the time of Jinghis Khan belonged to the same confederacy as did the Mongol 

 clan. 



Until the real content of these names — Tatar and Mongol — has been dis- 

 entangled, we cannot hope to reconstruct the racial ccrapromise which took 

 place in Eastern Europe (more particularly on the Upper ^'o^cra) between Finnic, 

 Slavonic, and Turkic elements. 



3. Traces of Polynesian, Melanesian, and Australoid Elements in 

 Primitive America. By Eev. Francis A. Allen. 



The writer brought forward evidence to support the view that Melanesian, 

 Polynesian, and Australoid stocks are represented in the native populations of 

 America. 



4. The Physical Characteristics of the Modern Briton. 

 By Prof. F. G. Parsons. 



The subject is brought forward in order to collect the opinions and experience 

 of those working anthropologists who may be present as to the most valuable 

 and, at the same time, most practical characteristics of the modern inhabitants 

 of the British Isles. 



The following characteristics are suggested for discussion : 



{a) The Cranial and Cephalic Index. — It is desirable that this opportunity 

 should be seized for making a considered and up-to-date pronouncement as to 

 the working value of this index, and the opener, in spite of anything he has said 

 and written in the past, intends to submit his reasons for believing that, merely 

 in the shape of a bare index, it is a most valuable clue to racial origin. 



Stress will be laid on its value in the hitherto largely uncharted field of 

 modern Germany, as well as on the fact that the index of the British Isles is 

 the lowest in Europe. 



An attempt will be made to collect and tabulate all the cephalic indices 

 hitherto recorded of the British Isles, and it is hoped that subsequent speakers 

 will be able to point out or fill omissions where they occur. 



In this way, if it achieves nothing more, the discussion will justify itself 

 in pointing out to coming workers the places where our knowledge is weakest. 

 The advantages of reinforcing the bare index with a statement of length and 

 breadth averages and of frequency curves will be considered and also the effects 

 which sex and environment exert on the index. 



(b) The value of the orbital index will be considered, and the orbital 



