THE YELLOW RACES. 507 



are big, but the legs short; in stature, however, they are our equals, 

 for what may be wanting in the legs is made up in the upper part of the 

 body, crura quoque grossa, sed tibias breviores, statura tarn en nobis 

 (equates; quod enini in tibiis deficit id in superior e corpore compensatur. m 



This portrait of the Tartar, drawn by Yvon, of Narbonne, is very 

 remarkable in spite of its exaggerations and mistakes. 



It shows, in fact, how the attention of the observer was at that 

 time called to some of the principal features of that exceptional mor- 

 phology which make of the true Mongol one of the fundamental 

 anthropological types. From that time on Europeans, missionaries, 

 merchants, etc., who shall approach the mysterious countries of the 

 East will collect impressions less and less limited, less and less vague. 

 And if in their reports they still continue to confound in one and the 

 same great body races which have since been found to be infinitely 

 varied, they will at least gradually establish a kind of general group- 

 ing, a first essay at coordination, which later on will lead to a rational 

 classification. 



Bernier is a fair representative of this phase of Asiatic studies in 

 his famous letter, "On the different varieties of races of men," inserted 

 in the Journal des Savants of 1684. "The third variety," he says, 

 after having spoken of the whites and blacks, "the third variety com- 

 prehends a part of the kingdoms of Arakan and of Siam, of the islands 

 of Sumatra and Borneo, the Philippines, Japan, the Kingdom of Pegu, 

 Tonquin, China, Cochinchina, Tartary, which lies between China, the 

 Ganges and Moscovia, Usbeg, Turkistan, Zaquetay, a part of Mosco- 

 via, the Little Tartars and the Turkomans, who live on the banks of 

 the Euphrates toward Aleppo." " The inhabitants of all these coun- 

 tries," adds the illustrious traveler, " are really whites, but they have 

 broad shoulders, flat faces, a small, crushed nose, small pig eyes, long 

 and deep sunk, and three hairs for a beard." 



This third variety of men of Bernier's is almost exactly the yellow 

 trunk of modern anthropologists. The Americans alone are wanting, 

 because Bernier with his imperfect knowledge of them did not see in 

 them a sufficiently great difference to warrant making of them a 

 special variety that would differ from ours. Mongols and Turks, Indo- 

 Chinese, Japanese, and Malays are here all of them put into one and 

 the same mold, which is to be broken up only much later by ethnolo- 

 gists, linguists, and anthropologists. 



The names of Pallas, Castrero, Baer, and many others recall the vig- 

 orous efforts made for more than a century now to introduce a little 

 order into Mongoiic studies. The linguists insist upon it that we should 

 not mix up in one and the same great whole people who speak mono- 

 syllabic languages and others who use the agglutinative system. The 

 ethnologists also find it easy to show clearly the profound divergences 

 which result from entirely different social systems, as from entirely 



1 Mathtti Parisiensis, ruouachi Sancti Albani, Chronica major, edit, by E. Luard, 

 Vol. IV, 1877, hi 8vo. 



