LECTURE V. 131 



peculiarities of living men. DresSj habits, and manners, are 

 apt to produce ideas whicli do not correspond to the reality, or 

 are evidently exaggerated. It lias been said that we cannot 

 imagine a Turk without a shaven head, or a Chinese without 

 his pigtail and wide breeches. This circumstance shows the 

 necessity of studying the comparative natural history of man- 

 kind in the originals, and not from hearsay. 



I must also impress upon you, that the more mixed the races are 

 which occupy our attention, the more numerous must be our ob- 

 servations, and the more searching our inquiry into particulars. 

 A hundredfold greater exertions, more numerous measurements, 

 drawings and photographs are required, to extract from the great 

 hotch-potch of European intermixtures the original types, than 

 are necessary to point out the peculiarities in pure types. 

 Whilst it is the individual character which strikes us at once 

 in the European, the sight of a Bashkir impresses us with the 

 general race type ; and whilst among the latter the unpractised 

 eye cannot easily distinguish one individual from another, we 

 are in the European frequently doubtful as to the stock to 

 which he belongs. I recollect how my grandmother amused 

 ■us children by her stories of the war of liberation, and lier 

 description of the faces of our liberators, which came from the 

 eastern steppes, under the Russian banner, which, by the way, 

 they left us as the banner of German politics, whilst they 

 carried back the spoils of the citizens into their steppes. She 

 told us how they rushed into the kitchen, how they opened 

 their wide mouths garnished with tremendous teeth, and 

 winked with their obliquely set eyes. Each appeared a wolf, 

 and only a wolf, — no individuality was distinguishable; they 

 seemed to be all formed after the same model, — Bashkirs and 

 Calmucks, — ancient, very ancient, nobility of pure and un- 

 mixed stock from the Asiatic cradle of mankind ! 



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