logician's suggestio falsi is made use of by Dr. Wilson, to induce general readers to believe that the theory that the American aborigines are referable to two distinct cranial types-the brachy- and dolichocephalic-was arrived at by Mr. J. H. Blake as an original observation, we consider very much to be deplored. The theory was originated by Morton, but was left to be intelligibly propounded by Retzius. The whole subject of the distortion of Peruvian crania has been sufficiently ventilated of late years: and the supererogatory attention which Dr. Wilson has paid to the subject can, we think, only be attributable to an excess of leisure on his part, which is most unprofitably spent in the two chapters before us.

The chapters on the Mixture of Indian and White Blood are of great interest to the anthropologist. Dr. Wilson utterly repudiates the idea of the half-breeds being an example of the weakness and non-permanence of mixed races; and he gives an account of their physical and moral excellences, which the advocates of the opposite view of such races have to answer. It is true that these half-breeds are not likely to form a permanent race; but this arises, in Dr. Wilson's opinion, from no want of productiveness, but simply from their gradual absorption into the general population of the country. We do not go further into the discussion of Dr. Wilson's anthropological opinions, which we hope will be examined by special students.

We have complained of Dr. Wilson's discussing various important topics without a proper knowledge of existing materials. For instance, a dissertation on museums of Mexican antiquities (vol. ii, p. 94, etc.) contains no mention of the great Uhde collection, now at Berlin, the finest in the world except that of Mexico itself. A discussion of the mysterious question, "Who were the builders of the ruined cities of Central America?" ought to have contained at least some reference to the remarkable legends published by the Abbé Brasseur de Bourbourg; and it is of little use to argue at the present day about the origin and history of the Aztecs, without the aid of one of the very most important pieces of evidence we possess on this difficult subject, Professor Buschmann's researches on the traces of the Aztec language far up into the interior of North America.

We find with astonishment, a mention of "Letters" as known to the ancient inhabitants of Central America (vol. ii, p. 453). This must, we suppose, refer to the remarkable figures, often spoken of as "hieroglyphics", in the Central American sculptures. Any one who looks at the description of these sculptures in vol. ii, chap. xix, or studies the plates in Stephens for half an hour, may know as much as

Dr. Wilson or any one else knows about the matter, and will at least wonder at the power of imagination which has enabled him to lay it down that they are "hieroglyphic holophrasms" and "letters"!

Dr. Wilson is very unfortunate in his philology. He adopts the popular derivation of the name of the manati, or cow-fish, from Spanish mano, a hand, as though meaning "the fish with hands", without stopping to inquire by what process of Spanish etymology manatí could be made from mano. The word is really a Carib one, and is given as manattoüi in Raymond Breton. He regards the word kona, which is said to mean "woman" in Greenlandish as well as in Old Norse, as "a clearly recognized trace" of the presence of the Norsemen in Greenland. Now, though Egede gives the word kona in his Dictionary, he marks it as not genuine Greenlandish; and, if it were genuine, it would not be safe to say, without further evidence, that it was anything more than an accidental coincidence.

"One swallow does not make a summer", is one of the fundamental principles of philology. Chapter iii of the first volume is on speech; and in it the author's exaggerated idea of the range of imitative words in language leads him into some very astonishing statements. If horses say htor, and cows ehe, and serpents hoff, we can only say that the popular idea of their voices is grossly wrong. A glance at Pictet's Origines Indo-Européennes would dispel Dr. Wilson's delusive idea that the name of the beaver has anything to do with any imitation of its voice; and there are other things in the chapter as objectionable as these.

While acknowledging the value of Dr. Wilson's personal observations, and the number of useful details which he has collected and arranged, it is necessary to say that he is by no means a guide to be followed blindfold, and that only those students who have the opportunity of sifting the good from the bad are likely to receive much benefit from his present work.

142

ETHNOGRAPHIC DESCRIPTION OF THE PEOPLES OF

RUSSIA.*

By T. De PAULY.

Dedicated to the Emperor Alexander on the occasion of the Millenary Jubilee of the Russian Empire.

THIS is really a most magnificent work, and reflects the highest credit on Russian science and art, being illustrated by sixty-two coloured plates representing the types and costumes of all the peoples of the Russian Empire. M. Pauly, himself known as a patient and industrious investigator, has had the advantage of the assistance of Eckert, Ritter, Schott, Kopper, Kounck, Brosset, etc. Ch. de Baer has furnished the introduction. The work is divided into five principal sections, namely, Indo-Europeans; Peoples of the Caucasus; OuraloAltaic Peoples; Peoples of Eastern Siberia; Peoples of Russian America. The sections are subdivided into chapters, each of which treats of a distinct nationality, with a description of its habits, history, organization, etc.

There is an appendix containing, (1) a plate representing the chief cranial types; (2) a statistical table founded on the last official documents; and (3) an ethnographic chromo-lithograph map.

The work has only one drawback, it is inaccessible from its price, which is not less than £35 sterling. Considering, however, that the designs have been furnished and executed by the most renowned artists, that the plates have been destroyed, and that only comparatively few copies have been printed; we do not think that the author will derive much advantage in a pecuniary point of view. It is rare, indeed, to see such a work attempted and successfully executed by the private resources of an individual.

We give an extract from Baer's introduction.

Among the scientific works which distinguish the present epoch, none are more useful, and deserve to be received with more favour, than a new and complete description of the peoples of the Russian Empire. In our anthropological treatises we no longer restrict ourselves to carefully grouping the numerous varieties of man, but we attach the greatest importance to the diversity of the intellectual faculties of nations.

"A work which gives precise information on these interesting subjects, would both facilitate scientific research, and would be invaluable

Description Ethnographique des Peuples de la Russie, par T. de Pauly. 1862. St. Petersburgh.

to the government with regard to the administration of the respective countries."

The preceding remarks show that M. de Pauly has filled up a gap in the domain of science.

The area of the Russian Empire, in 1859, is estimated by Pauly at 400,000 geographical square miles, with a population of seventy-four millions. Of this number, fifty-five millions, that is more than threefourths of the whole population, belong to the Slavonian race-the most numerous of the three principal European races, amounting to above 80,000,000 of souls. We find, thus, that of the various elements composing the population of the Russian Empire, the Slavonian greatly predominates, and there only maintains its sovereignty, not being, as elsewhere, subject to other nationalities. We shall, probably, have occasion to refer to this great work in a future number.

ON THE COMMIXTURE OF THE RACES OF MAN IN WESTERN AND CENTRAL ASIA.*

BY JOHN CRAWFURD, Esq., F.R.S.,

PRESIDENT OF THE ETHNOLOGICAL SOCIETY; HONORARY FELLOW OF THE
ANTHROPOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF LONDON.

AMONG the races that have played the most conspicuous part in history are the Jews, including under this name all the people of Palestine and Phoenicia. I imagine they are now everywhere more or less a mixed people. It is sufficient distinction for a small people, with a narrow territory, that they were the first to engage in foreign maritime commerce-that they founded Carthage, the rival of Rome; and that from among them sprang the two forms of religion which now prevail with half the inhabitants of the globe and all the more civilized.

The entire region occupied by the Hebrew race is not above a fourth part larger than the Principality of Wales. It is a country of mountains, rocks, deserts, but with some well-watered, and therefore fertile, plains and valleys. Near ten degrees beyond the tropic, Palestine in climate resembles the southern countries of Europe, and its natural products correspond, for it was a land of wheat and barley, of the vine and the olive. The race was, in energy and enterprise, far more European than Asiatic. Hemmed in by deserts and the Extracted from a paper read before the Ethnological Society, March 17th,

1863.

Mediterranean, they seem to have made the most of their narrow bounds. Far beyond the reach of history, they had cultivated corn, had domesticated the most useful of the lower animals, were in possession of the useful and precious metals, and had invented phonetic writing, while their dull neighbours the Egyptians never went beyond clumsy symbols.

Had so energetic a race as the Jewish possessed an extensive territory, they would, no doubt, have become great and powerful conquerors. As it was, their obstinate valour did not hinder them from being subdued by every powerful people that attempted their conquest; so that for at least thirty ages they have been more or less intermixed with races both Asiatic and European.

At a very early age a colony of Jews settled in Egypt; and that they were not very grievously oppressed there, seems attested by the rapid increase which took place in their numbers. It was this colony which, escaping from bondage, returned to their parent country by the Arabian Desert, and subdued the cognate tribes that occupied it. We cannot suppose that in their long residence in Egypt, and during their tedious passage through the Desert, they did not commingle with Egyptians and Arabs, although usually solicitous to preserve the purity of their own blood. The man of genius who rescued them from Egyptian thraldom-led them through the Desert, and gave them laws and institutions, was himself married first to a Midianite—that is, it may be presumed, to an Arabian-and then to an Ethiopian-that is, to a Nubian-whose blackness was as unchangeable as "the spots of the leopard." On coming into the promised land, it was, moreover, lawful for them, after destroying the males, to intermarry with the captive females without distinction of

race.

In process of time the Assyrians conquered Palestine; in the first instance carrying off ten of the tribes into captivity, and then the remaining two. By this we are certainly not to understand that the Assyrians carried off the entire nation of the Jews. They would naturally carry off a selection only of ordinary prisoners, and all the leading men, to obviate revolt; for we cannot suppose even Oriental conquerors so insensate as to destroy the value of their conquest by reducing it to the condition of an unpeopled desert. The select few of two of the tribes were eventually permitted to return to their own country, but the banished of the ten tribes never had such permission, and being absorbed by the more numerous people among whom they were planted, they have, as an inevitable consequence, wholly disappeared as Jews, and hence the ten lost tribes will never be found.