January 27, 1888.] 



SCIENCE. 



41 



western part of this region from Montenegro and Servia north- 

 westward, their greater number being under Austrian rule. While 

 these peoples immigrated during the middle ages, numerous re- 

 mains of the ancient inhabitants of south-eastern Europe are still 

 extant, although in course of time much influenced by the immi- 

 grants of the middle ages. The most important of these are the 

 Greeks in Greece and the adjoining parts of Turkey ; on the Archi- 

 pelago, Crete, and on many points of Asia Minor. Their distribu- 

 tion all around the coasts of the ^^igean Sea and on the south-west 

 coast of the Black Sea shows that they are principally a seafaring 

 and trading people. Colonies of Greeks are found in all great cities 

 of the Orient. Their neighbors are the Albanese, who live in the 

 rugged mountains of the western part of the Balkan Peninsula, 

 ■east of Montenegro. They are presumably descendants of the 

 ancient lUyrians, although much doubt prevails as to their descent. 

 In southern Euboea and around the Gulf of vEgina they live among 

 Greeks. 



During the reign of the Romans over eastern Europe many 

 peoples became Romanized. Their descendants are the Roume- 

 nians in Roumenia, Bessarabia, Transylvania, eastern Hungary, and 

 the north-eastern corner of Servia. It is of interest that a number 

 of them, widely separated from the main body, should live in the 

 Pindus, near Berat, and in a few villages of eastern Thessalia. 



The invasion of the Turks added a new element to these peoples, 

 but there are only few places which are inhabited by them exclu- 

 sively. Their principal territory in Europe is the eastern part of 

 the Balkan Peninsula, between the mouths of the Danube, Philip- 

 popolis, and Constantinople ; but, besides this, numerous isolated 

 districts throughout the peninsula are inhabited by them. The 

 number of Turks, however, in the outlying districts, which are not 

 any longer under Turkish rule, has greatly decreased since the 

 recent wars. The principal district of the Turks is Asia Minor. 



In the north-western part of south-eastern Europe we find an- 

 other foreign people settled among the Indo-Europeans, — the 

 Hungarians, who belong to the Finno-Tartarian race. They 

 occupy the greater part of Hungary, where Germans, Servians, 

 Roumenians, Russians, and Slovenians are settled among them, 

 and the eastern part of Transylvania. Last of all we mention the 

 Germans, who are the neighbors of the Hungarians and Servians 

 in the north-west, but have, besides, numerous colonies in Hun- 

 gary, Transylvania, and near the mouths of the Danube. 



The development of these numerous peoples is one of the inter- 

 esting problems of European history. It is hardly possible to 

 ■classify the peoples who in ancient times lived in these regions. 

 During the middle ages numerous peoples — the Gauls, Romans, 

 Goths, Huns, Avars, Petchenegs, and Cumans — invaded the pe- 

 ninsula ; but the principal part of the population consists of the 

 ancient Slovenes of Pannonia, who settled in course of time in the 

 province of Moesia. About the middle of the seventh century we 

 hear about their wars with the Byzantine empire. The most im- 

 portant event in the early history of the southern Slavic peoples is 

 the invasion of the Bulgarians. Their descent is doubtful, for their 

 language has been lost. Gaster points out that not only the relics 

 of Bulgarian language, which consist mostly of proper names, 

 but also certain customs, are in favor of the theory that they be- 

 longed to the Turkish peoples who ruled in southern Russia, and 

 that with them came certain Finnish tribes. They crossed the 

 Danube in 679 A.D., and in course of time subjected all peoples of 

 south-eastern Europe. Within a few centuries they became amal- 

 gamated with the Slavic people, whom they had conquered, and 

 thus formed the Bulgarian people of the present time. We need 

 only to mention that the Turkish invaders found all these peoples 

 settled, and added a new element to the numerous races and peo- 

 ples of that region. 



From this brief review of the facts it will be seen that there exists 

 no homogeneous people in south-eastern Europe, but that all of 

 them are the descendants of an extensive mixture of different peo- 

 ples. Even the Greeks, whose language has comparatively little 

 <;hanged since the times of antiquity, have been greatly influenced 

 by Slavic peoples. 



As none of the states of this region comprises a population speak- 

 ing only one language, and as at the present time the history of 

 Europe is entirely ruled by the desire of each nation to be inde- 



pendent, the natural outcome of this state of affairs is a continuous 

 struggle between the various peoples. But a glance at the map 

 shows that the actual distribution of the peoples makes the estab- 

 lishment of states comprising only one people impossible. A Greek 

 empire would exclude all other peoples from the sea ; a Bulgarian 

 state would include numerous Greeks, Turks, and Albanese. It is 

 of great interest that these difficulties have only arisen in our cen- 

 tury, for before this time the idea of nationality was hardly known. 

 It is only since the French revolution that the tendency of all peo- 

 ples speaking one language to form one state has grown up. To 

 this idea Italy and Germany owe their existence, and it threatens 

 Austria and Turkey with destruction. It is remarkable to see how 

 people bitterly opposed to one another, not on account of diverging 

 interests, but on account of difference of language, in Europe, be- 

 come merged in our continent into one great people; how the same 

 process that has been going on in Europe so frequently during the 

 middle ages, but only by means of wars, is going on peaceably in 

 America. Our map shows that so long as the same ideas and 

 interests remain the leading ones in the history of south-eastern 

 Europe, there is a constant source of wars and minor troubles, 

 even aside from the contending interests of Russia and Austria to 

 gain a foothold on the yEgean Sea, and England's fear of Russia's 

 commanding the entrance to the Black Sea. 



VALUES IN CLASSIFICATION OF THE STAGES OF 

 GROWTH AND DECLINE, AND PROPOSITIONS FOR 

 A NEW N0A1ENCLATURE. 



At the meeting of the Boston Society of Natural History, Nov. 

 16, 1887, Prof. Alpheus Hyatt presented a paper, of which the fol- 

 lowing is an abstract. He proposed, in accord with views pre- 

 viously published in his ' Larval Theory of the Origin of Tissue,' ' 

 and an abstract of the same subsequently printed in the American 

 Jourjial of Science, May 31, 1886, to divide the animal kingdom 

 into three comprehensive divisions : (i) Protozoa, unicellular an- 

 imals, which propagate by means of asexual (autotemnic) fission 

 and by spores, and build up colonies, but always remain typically 

 unicellular ; (2) Mesozoa, multicellular colonies, but composed of 

 only one layer of cells, so closely connected that they form a layer 

 of primitive tissue. They have more or less spherical forms, and 

 propagate by means of ova, spermatozoa, and by autotemnic fis- 

 sion, and have an aula or common cavity, but no specialized di- 

 gestive cavity or archenteron ; (3) Metazoa, complexes of multi- 

 cellular colonies, in which growth by sexual union and resulting 

 fission of the ovum form three primitive tissue layers, and build up 

 a body in which an archenteron is always developed, they propagate 

 always by means of ova and spermatozoa, autotemnic fission occur- 

 ring only, if at all, during the earliest stages of the ovum. 



The stages of holoblastic ova may be in a general way classified 

 as follows, to accord with that given above for the animal king- 

 dom : — 



(i) The ovum or monoplast (Lankester) ; (2) the first stage of 

 segmentation, which normally results in the production of two 

 cells, the Monoplacida ; (3) the second stage of segmentation, in 

 which two layers arise, the Diploplacida. The first two stages 

 alone seem to have parallel or representative adult forms among 

 Protozoa. He proposed to classify these stages under the name of 

 ' protembryo.' 



(4) The blastula is in aspect and general characteristics the mor- 

 phological equivalent of the adults of the genera Volvox and 

 Eudorina, the types of the Mesozoa or Blastrea. The latter are 

 animals in which growth remained permanently arrested at the 

 single-layered, spherical stage in the evolution of tissue-building 

 forms. He proposed to classify these stages under the name of 

 ' mesembryo.' 



(5) The gastrula can be compared, as has been done by Haeckel, 

 with the lower Porifera {Ascones), but these have three layers like 

 the lowest Hydrozoa, in which a three-layered gastrula-like stage 

 has been permanently preserved. The proper name for these 

 stages would therefore be ' metembryo,' in allusion to the fact that 

 the ovum at this stage was probably essentially a metazoon, or a 

 near approximation to this type. 



Proceedings of the Boston Society of Natural History, vol. xxiii. 1884, p. 45. 



