326 NOTICE OF A SKULL BROUGHT FROM THE CRIMEA. 
Blumenbach’s solitary Georgian skull, “never has a single head 
done more mischief to science, than was done in the way of posthu- 
mous mischief, by the head of this well-shaped female from Georgia,” 
may have had their influence in tempting to the Caucasian paradox 
of his Dioscurian Mongols. The classification, at any rate, entirely 
ignores physical conformation, and rests on vocabulary analogies, 
confirmed by an opinion expressed by Mr. Norris, of the Asiatic 
Society, that on the surer evidence of grammatical comparison, the 
closest philological affinity of the Dioscurian languages is with the 
Aptotic ones, of which the Chinese is generally accepted as the type. 
It is scarcely necessary to say, that languages may belong to a 
different class from the people who speak them. Europe supplies 
abundant and well authenticated illustrations of this. An Hnglish- 
man speaking Chinese, does not thereby become a Mongol, nor will 
the adoption of the English tongue by the Chinese emigrants to 
Australia and elsewhere, affect their essentially Mongolian physical 
characteristics. Dr. Latham accordingly refers to the want of suf- 
ficient evidence for discussing the pbysical elements of classification 
ia his Dioscurian Mongols. “ Physiological objections,’ he observes, 
“based upon the symmetry of shape and delicacy of complexion on 
the part of the Georgians and Circassians, I am at present unable to 
meet. I can only indicate our want of osteological data, and remind 
my readers of the peculiar climatological conditions of the Caucasian 
range ; which is at once temperate, mountainous, wooded, and in the 
neighbourhood of the sea—in other words the reverse of all Mongol 
areas hitherto enumerated. Perhaps, too,’’ he adds, “I may limit 
the extent of such objections as a matter of fact. It is only amongst 
the chiefs, where the personal beauty of the male portion of the pop- 
ulation is at allremarkable. The tillers of the soil are, comparatively 
speaking, coarse and unshapely.” 
The latter remark—whatever be its value,—may be made of the 
tillers of the soil everywhere ; but if the Georgian and Circassian 
mothers are generally as graceful and beautiful im form as the con- 
current opinion of travellers affirms them to be, the perpetuation of 
anything approximating to a Mongol physical type in their sons, 
would be one of the greatest marvels in physiological ethnology. In 
the absence, however, of osteological data, the smallest contribution 
towards the accumulation of the requisite facts may have its value. 
The history of the cranium to which I now direct attention, is a8 
