508 THE YELLOW RACES. 



different moral codes. The anthropologists finally claim the great impor- 

 tance of physical characteristics which are now studied for this purpose, 

 with the aid of exact instruments, applied to living subjects as well as 

 to skeletons. And from the coordination of all these combined studies 

 there results a classification, which no doubt will yet have to undergo 

 important changes, but which already, and however insufficient it may 

 remain as yet, may give to instruction on this subject the frame work, 

 so to say, which it needs, even though it be only provisional. 



It is no longer sufficient, in fact, as it was for Buffbn, to compile the 

 reports of travelers and to put them side by side in geographical order. 

 Now, those descriptions which have become more accurate and more 

 scientific must be presented in the most logical connection that is pos- 

 sible, and the characteristic features must appear subordinated in natu- 

 ral succession. It is only by applying these principles that we have 

 succeeded in combining a classification which, before going any further, 

 we deem it proper to present here in a summary arrangement. 



Let us first of all recall the fact that we began by putting aside pro- 

 visionally the American and the Malayan races, for a complete study 

 of which this year's course will hardly suffice. Having thus gained 

 more space for our purposes, we have set aside eight fairly kindred sub- 

 jects, which are more or less voluminous, more or less ramified, which 

 we will for the present mention by the names of Mongol, Turk, Indo- 

 Mongol, Aleut, Tungus, Aino, Chinese, and Eskimauan. 



The first is the properly so-called Mongolian branch, which has 

 occasionally, by a mistake, given its name to the whole family, and 

 which, on account of the exaggerations of all kinds that flourish con- 

 cerning the subdivisions of which it consists, well deserves to occupy 

 the first place at the head of our group. The word which designates it 

 (Mongkou), and which means brave, bold, generous, is, however, the 

 name of that fraction of the Chi-houei to which (lengis Khan belonged, 

 which sufficiently explains the part that such a name has played and 

 still plays in the nomenclature of races. 



The Mongolians constitute a mass of 2,000,000 to 3,000,000 souls 

 almost all of whom dwell between Siberia and China, Manchuria and 

 Turkestan; they are actually subdivived into Eastern Mongolians, the 

 most numerous of whom, the Khalkas, are sometimes called Exterior 

 Mongolians (the Interior Mongolians form the tribes Chakkau, Ourote, 

 Ordo, etc.); Western Mongolians, called Kalmuks by the Turks, and 

 subdivided into Songares or Tchoroses, Derbethes, Torgotes or Tar- 

 goutes, and Khochotes or Khochooutes of the Ala-Chan, and finally 

 Bouriats, sometimes called Northeastern Mongolians. 



To whichever group they may belong, these Mongolians are, as I 

 have said before, the most marked of all yellow men ; they exaggerate 

 all their characteristic features to such a degree that in endeavoring 

 to sketch the points that specially distinguish them, we have been 

 able to form, as it were, a kind of large canvass, on which, afterwards, 

 all our other Asiatic designs could be fitted, one after the other. 



