302 NATURAL HISTORY OF 



who themselves acknowledged gods of high northern 01 gin, and 

 venerated milk-eating Scythae. What could these tribes be 

 but Finnic or Gomerian Celts, who, in the east of Europe, as 

 in the west, were fused into later and more powerful tribes, 

 with far less resistance than is often shown when kindred na- 

 tions oppose the pretensions of each other?* Hence races of 

 Finnic origin passed, in antiquity, by conquest or mutual con- 

 sent, into Celto-Scytha? and Pelasgians, so that in many cases 

 it is impossible to trace the nations further up than to their 

 second or third amalgamation. We find this substantiated by 

 words belonging in common to the Etruscan, Basque, Ligu- 

 rian, and ancient languages of western Asia : such, for ex- 

 ample, as Tar, in Tarchon, Brig, in Briga, Larch, in Larissa, 

 Gur, in Calagurris, Maitagurra, the Durga of the Pyrenees, 

 &c; and there are others, in the traditions of tribes that appear 

 to have been connected by Finnic consanguinity, such as the 

 Basque Haitor, the most early British Heytor, the first, if not 

 both, being a denomination of a superior divinity, probably allied 

 to Thor. There is a still more remarkable coincidence in the 

 Navarrese and Cantabrian legend of the blue cow, lowing 

 from the verge of the mountain forest, when national disasters 

 were at hand, corresponding to the same doctrine anciently 

 believed in the western parts of the present Hanoverian domin- 

 ions ; while both recall to mind the celebrated Indian mountain 

 peak of Gho-Karma (the moaning cow), which, if it have a 

 geographical position at all, must be the same as the seat of 

 Mahadeo, at the source of the Ganges, also known by the name 

 of Himavahn. These and other Finnic and Oriental elements, 

 known to exist in the Basque as it is now spoken, justify the 

 claim we make of that ancient race as originally appertaining 

 to the intermediate stem now under consideration, more par- 



* The river Alpheus bears a Finnic name, for Alf Elf, in Larland and 

 Finland, still denotes a torrent, and, it may not be amiss to observe, that 

 Eric Erk, in Swedo-Finnic, is still a proper name, always considered a 

 synonym of Hercules. The Heraclids in fact were Finnic Got! s. 



