THE HUMAN SPECIES. 283 



Tschutski, Jakoutski, or others, not perhaps pure Hyperbo- 

 reans, such as the iron-working Niron tribes of Mongolia 

 appropriately typified by griffins and dragons, since these very 

 monsters have been their national ensigns from the remotest 

 ages; and at several times conquerors have issued from among 

 them, desolating the earth, and forming the greatest as well 

 as the most transient empires in human history.* 



Whether the Phryni and Seres of antiquity, mentioned by 

 Pliny, Strabo, and Ptolemy, were really of the beardless stock 

 in possession of Kashgar and Yarkund, and associated with 

 the Tokhari as early as the Macedonian conquest, may well 

 be contested, since the conjecture of Dr. Vincent, that for 

 Scythioe should be read Sindh, is proved to be incorrect. The 

 southern glens of that region, being the spontaneous land of the 

 mulberry tree, had then, no doubt, their own different species 

 of indigenous silk-worms, which they still possess, and from 

 their produce the name Serica was derived, as well as Seres, 

 without reference to the origin of the nation that then had 

 rule. There can be little doubt but that they were Caucasian 

 Scythians of remote times, since the name of the Tokhari has 

 been read phonetically among the vanquished tribes repre- 

 sented on Egyptian temples, where the conquests of a Thoth- 

 mes or Remses are depicted, and the population of those high 

 lands is not even now Mongolic. What the earlier Greeks 

 related of the Seres, who were reported to be satyrs, eighteen 

 cubits in height, sufficiently proves they knew the name only 

 in connection with some colossal statues of Indian or of Bac- 

 trian divinities. 



The Chinese, in their earliest records, seem to denominate 

 the whole beardless stock Le Mia, or black-haired people, 

 according to the old classical comment on the Yaou Tan, in 

 order to distinguish them from the foreign races, which are 

 designated as invariably red or fair-haired ; that is, Yuchi. 



* Such as Ogus Khan, about 657 B. C, to Genghiz Khan, about 1154 

 A. D. 



