ir4 



SCIENCE. 



[Vol. XVL ^o. 4(5^ 



students, we attempt this year to begin to develop the peda- 

 gogy of higher education by a new department, and a new 

 third journal, now about to be issued from the university. 



"Finally, although we yet lack all the traditions and en- 

 thusiasm that come with age, with what gratitude and ear- 

 nest felicitation does every mind and heart here turn to a 

 founder who is not a tradition, a picture, a statue, or even a 

 memory, but the living, animating power of the institution 

 he has planted with such wisdom, and watered with such 

 care! As an investigator toils to bless mankind with new 

 discoveries, so he has wrought that the world might be 

 blessed by the more rapid increase and diffusion of truth. 

 As a teacher longs to impart all his knowledge to a favored 

 pupil, so he has been the best of all my teachers in things in 

 which a scholar may sometimes lack wisdom. As parents 

 are anxious for the comfort and highest success of all their 

 children, so he, and his devoted wife, could even be careless 

 of what all others may say or do, if only every man here be 

 so placed, furnished, and incited as to do the best work of 

 which he is capable, for himself and for science If we 

 labor with his persistence and devotion, his care in things 

 that are small as well as great, we cannot fail to realize his 

 and all our highest hopes and best wishes for Clark Univer- 

 sity." 



THE ARYAN CRADLE-LAND.' 



" It will be for the benefit of our science,'" said the president of 

 the Anthropological Section of the British Association, " that 

 speculations as to the origin and home of the Aryan family should 

 be rife; but it will still more conduce to our eventual knowledge 

 of this most interesting question if it be consistently borne in mind 

 that they are but speculations." With the latter, no less than 

 with the former opinion, I cordially agree. And as, in my address 

 on the Aryan cradle-land in the Anthropological Section, I stated 

 a greater variety of grounds in support of the hypothesis of origin 

 in the Russian steppes than has been elsewhere set forth, I trust 

 that I may be allowed briefly to formulate these reasons, and sub- 

 mit them to discussion. 



(!) The Aryans, on om- first historical knowledge of them, are 

 in two widely separated centres, — Transoxiana and Thrace. To 

 Transoxiana as a secondary centre of dispersion the eastern Aryans, 

 and to Thrace as a secondary centre of dispersion the western 

 Aryans, can, with more or less clear evidence or probable infer- 

 ence be triced, from about the fourteenth or perhaps fifteenth 

 century B.C.; and the mid-region north-west of Transoxiana and 

 north-east of Thrace — and which maybe more definitely described 

 as lying between the Caspian and the Euxine. the Ural and the 

 Dnieper, and extending from the 45th to the 50th parallel of lati- 

 tude - suggests itself as a probable primary centre of origin and 

 dispersion. 



(2) For the second set of facts to be considered reveal earlier 

 white races, from which, if the Aryans originated in this region, 

 they might naturally have descended as a hybrid variety. Such 

 are the facts which connect the Finns of the north, the Khirgiz 

 and Turkomans of the east, and the Alarodians of the south with 

 that non-Semitic and non-Aryan white stock which has been called 

 by some Allophyllian, but which, borrowing a term recently in- 

 troduced into geology, may, I think, be preferably termed Archaian; 

 and the facts which make it probable that these white races have 

 from time immemorial met and mingled in the South Russian 

 steppes. Nor, in this connection, must the facts be neglected which 

 make great environmental changes probable in this region at a 

 period possibly synchronous with that of Aryan origins. 



(3) In the physical conditions of the steppes characterizing the 

 region above defined, there were, and indeed are to this day, as 

 has been especially shown by Dr. Schrader, the conditions neces- 



' From Nature of Oct. 2. 



sary for such pastoral tribes as their language shows that the' 

 Aryans primitively were; while in the regions l>etween the Dnieper 

 and the Carpathians, and between the Oxus and the Himalayas, 

 the Aryans would, both in their south-western and south eastern^ 

 migrations, be at once compelled and invited, by the physicat 

 conditions encountered, to pass at least partially from the pastoral 

 into the agiicultural stage. 



(4) The Aryan languages present such indications of liybridity 

 as would correspond with such racial intermixture as that sup- 

 posed: and in the contemporary language of the Finnic groups; 

 Professor De Lacouperie thinks that we may detect survivals of a 

 former language presenting aflSnities with the general characteris- 

 tics of Aryan speech. 



(5) A fifth set of verifying facts are such Unks of relationship' 

 between the various Aryan languages as geographically spoken ire 

 historical times, — such links of relationship as appear to postulate 

 a common speech in that very area above indicated, and where are 

 ancient Aryan language still survives along with primitive Aryan, 

 customs: for such a common speech would have one class of 

 differentiations on the Asiatic, and another on the European side, 

 caused by the diverse linguistic re-actions of conquered non- Aryan 

 tribes on primitive Aryan speech, or the dialects of it already de- 

 veloped in those great river partitioned plains. 



(6) A further set of verifying facts are to be found in those 

 which lead us more and more to a theory of the derivative origiit 

 of the classic civilizations, both of the western and of the eastern 

 Aryans. Just as between the Dnieper and the Carpathians, and 

 between the Oxus and the Himalayas, there were such conditions 

 as must have both compelled and invited to pass from the pastoral 

 into a partially agricultural stage, so, in passing southward frora 

 each of these regions, the Aryans would come into contact with 

 conditions at once compellina; and inviting to pass into a yet 

 higher stage of civilization. And in support of this all the facts 

 may be adduced which are more and more compelling scholars to 

 acknowledge that in pre-existing Oriental civilizations the sources 

 are to be found, not only of the Hellenic and the Italic, but of the 

 Iranian and the Indian civilizations. 



(7) Fmally, if the Hellenic civilization and mythology is thus 

 to be mainly derived from a pre-existing Oriental or "Pelasgian' 

 civilization, it is either from such pre existing civilizations, or 

 from Aryans such as the Kelto Italiots, migrating northward and 

 southward from Pelasgian Thrace, that the civilization of western 

 and northern Europe would, on this hypothesis, be traced: and a 

 vast number of facts appear to make it more probable that the 

 earlier civilization of northern Europe was derived from the south 

 than that the earlier civilization of southern Europe was derived 

 from the north. 



The three conditions of a true solution of the problem either of 

 Semitic or of Aryan origins appear to be these: first, the locality 

 must be one in which such a new race could have ethnological ly, 

 and secondly philologically, arisen as a variety of the Archaian 

 stock of white races; and, thirdly, it must be such as to make 

 easily possible the historical facts of dispersion and early civiliza- 

 tion. And I venture to submit the above sets of facts as not in- 

 adequately, perhaps, supporting the South Russian " speculation 

 as to the origin and home of the Aryan family." 



J. S. Stuakt Glennie. 



ETHER INTOXICATION. 



We can bear out from personal observation, says the Lancet for 

 Sept. 20 editorially, many of the statements which are now going 

 the round of the public press in reference to the habit of ether- 

 drinking in some parts of Ulster ; for, in fact, some of the para- 

 graphs are nothing more than copies of what liave been reported 

 in years gone by. The practice came into use about the year 

 1841-42, and was at first a kind of re-action against the great 

 temperance movement which had been inaugurated by Father 

 Mathew. Ether, at that time of the ethylic type, probably not 

 very pure, was substituted for whiskey; and the habit, commencing 

 in or near to Drapers Town and spreading over a small surrounding 

 area, is continued up to the present day. The order of drinking, 

 as witnessed during a visit to the dictrict named, is singular. The 



