510 
SECOND REPORT -1835. 
lects. 4. Lastly, the language called Sclavonian, from which are 
derived all the languages of the North-east, the Russian, the 
Polonese, the Bohemian, the Wendish. It is this grand branch 
of the Caucasian race which has carried to the highest pitch 
philosophy, science, and the arts, and which has for more than 
thirty ages been the depositories of them/ 
“ There is indisputable proof in support of the assertion that 
the nations now enumerated may be identified by means of 
their languages. But how are they to he connected with the 
Arabs, Jews, and Egyptians, already referred to the same race, 
or with the third branch of the Caucasian race, who yet remain 
to be mentioned ? 
. “ ‘ The Scythian and Tartarian branch,* it is added, 4 ex¬ 
tend towards the north and north-east, ever wandering forth 
through the immense deserts of these regions, and only return¬ 
ing to overthrow the more happy settlements of their brethren. 
The Scythians, who so early made an irruption into the higher 
parts of Asia; the Parthians, who destroyed the Greek and Ro¬ 
man empires; the Turks, who overthrew that of the Arabs, 
and subdued in Europe the miserable remains of the Grecian 
nation,—were swarms from this horde. The Finlanders and 
Hungarians were a colony of them wandering among the nations 
of the Sclavonian and Teutonic races. Their original country 
to the northward and eastward of the Caspian Sea preserves yet 
traces of people of the same stock; but they are intermixed 
with an infinite number of other small tribes of different origin 
and languages. The Tartar people have remained more un¬ 
mixed in all this space. They long menaced Russia, and have 
at length been subjugated by her from the mouths of the Da¬ 
nube as far as those of the Irtisch.’ 
“We are here, in the first place, struck with the circumstance 
that the Tartar race are joined with the Finlanders and the 
Hungarians. Now the nations last mentioned are two branches of 
a stock spread through the northern parts of Europe and some 
regions of Asia from very early times, and are strongly distin¬ 
guished by physical character and by manners from the Tartar 
or Scythian race. What is still more important, the Finnish na¬ 
tions are always to be identified among themselves, and clearly 
distinguishable from the Tartars by their dialects. The Fenni 
and Scritifenni, belonging to the stock of the Finns and Lap¬ 
landers, are described by the Roman writers Tacitus and 
Pliny, as inhabitants of the North of Europe. They are men¬ 
tioned by King Alfred in his curious transcript of the Voyage of 
Ohter the Northman ; and according to the most learned inves¬ 
tigators of northern antiquities, the Finns are the people who 
under the name of Jotuni, or giants, had occupied Scandinavia 
