OCTOBEK 9, 1885.] 



SCIENCE. 



303 



SO Taried, that he would have been an admirable 

 man for the emergency, and even as a permanent 

 head would have shown many admu'able quahties. 

 Nevertheless he is doubtless right in saying that 

 four men can be named, two already in the gov- 

 ernment service, and two not so employed, who 

 are quahfied for the post by their acquaintance 

 with the precise investigations which are prosecuted 

 by the survey. One of these he hopes will be 

 appointed. 



From all that reaches us, we are persuaded that 

 neither the President nor his advisers are hostile to 

 the proper prosecution of the government work in 

 science. If abuses have crept into any depart- 

 ment, these abuses will doubtless be eradicated. 

 As the corrections proceed, undue zeal may some- 

 times be shown by the subordinate reformers ; in- 

 dividuals may neglect the considerations of courtesy 

 and the deference due to those whose lives have 

 been devoted without reproach to the service of 

 the country ; but the correspondence of Secretary 

 Manning and Professor Agassiz is to us an assur- 

 ance that science will not be retarded, and that 

 scientific men will not be slighted by any act of 

 President Cleveland. 



BULGARIA AND BULGARIANS. 



Forty-three years have come and gone since M. 

 Cyprien Robert wrote that : "On the confines of 

 Eiu'ope, there vegetates, enslaved and forlorn, a 

 nation hardly known at the present day, but de- 

 serving all our sympathy. This nation is that of 

 the Bulgarians, which has preserved, in the 

 hardest state of slavery, its ancient manners, its 

 lively faith, its noble character, and, after having 

 had a glorious past, seems destined, by its geo- 

 gi'aphical position, to play an unportant part in 

 the future." Few political prophets have been 

 happier in their prophecies. Since 1842 the Bul- 

 garians, having acquhed a national church and 

 some educational facilities, have thrown off the 

 cloak of listless barbarism which then enveloped 

 them, have risen against the Turks, their masters, 

 have been secured by the strong arm of Russia, 

 with the consent of Europe, in a position of con- 

 ditional independence, and now, at last, united 

 and aroused, seem destined to free themselves 

 entirely from the Turkish yoke, and, in time, per- 

 haps, to become the European successor of "that 

 multitudinous crime which we call the Ottoman 

 government." 



One must not ascribe everything to mere geo- 

 graphical position. National pecuharities have had 



much to do with this progress, but a glance at the 

 accompanying map will serve to show not merely 

 the commercial importance of the country inhabited 

 by the Bulgarians, but also that, in a purely 

 strategic point of view, the Bulgarians hold the 

 key to Constantinople. They may be said to 

 inhabit an hnmense square, bounded on the north 

 by the Danube from Widin to SUistria, and 

 thence, in a direct line, to the Black Sea near 

 Varna ; on the east by the Black Sea itself ; on 

 the south by the peninsula upon which Constan- 

 tinople stands, and the JEgean ; and on the west 

 by Albania and Servia. The northeastern portion 

 of this region, however, has been colonized by the 

 Tartars, who flying from Russian rule, soon after 

 the close of the Crimean war, settled on the grassy 

 plain lying to the north of the Roman wall, and 

 between the Danube and the Black Sea. This plain, 

 known as the Dobrudsha, soon proved too small 

 for them, and they spread thence to the south and 

 west for a considerable distance. Neither in 

 strictness can the Bulgarians be said to five on the 

 coast either of the Black or ^gean seas, as in all 

 the towns on the sea coast the Greek holds the 

 most important position. The Balkans divide this 

 Bulgarian square into two unequal parallelogi-ams, 

 the northern of which constitutes the Bulgaria of 

 the Berlin congress, while the southern forms the 

 larger part of the Eastern Rumelia of the same 

 instrument. Thus it will be seen that the Bul- 

 garian holds the line of the Danube, the outermost 

 defence of Constantinople ; that the Balkans, with 

 theu^ difficult passes, are entirely within his control; 

 that Shumla, which has so often and so promi- 

 nentl}^ figm'ed in the Russian advances, is now 

 a Bulgarian fortress, and that Adrianople, the 

 rafiroad centre of the Constantinople peninsula, 

 lies on his borders. Besides this, Salonika, the 

 military port of the ^gean, and Varna, that of the 

 Black Sea, are almost at the mercy of an army 

 having possession of the roads and the sympatlnes 

 of the people of this region, even though the ma- 

 jority of the inhabitants of the towns themselves 

 are inimical to the Bulgarians. 



The Bulgarians of to-day resemble the other 

 Slavic races of Europe more closely than they do 

 the Turks or the Greeks. Yet, unlike the Servians 

 and Montenegrins, they are not of pm-e Slavic 

 descent, but are a Slavonianized race. !Men 

 learned in the languages profess to find in the 

 Bulgarian dialect certain words and phi-ases which 

 point to a Finnish origin ; but there is an element, 

 too, derived from Turkish and Persian languages ; 

 while some scholars, relying more on ethnological 

 similarities than on phfiological analogies, declare 

 the Bulgarian to be of Mongol extraction. What- 

 ever theory is the ti'ue one, the Bulgarian differs 



