he general name of Germans; and it is only in
modern days that the careless enumeration of the classic writers has
been rejected, and a more scientific method substituted. It will
be seen, in fine, that in the main Obermueller does not differ from
accepted theories in German ethnology, which have long carefully
dissevered the Celts from the Teutons, and assigned to each tribe with
approximate accuracy its earliest fixed abode in Europe. It is the
tracing back of the German race proper to the first-born of Adam,
according to scriptural genealogy, which makes this theory curious and
amusing.

To the work of M. Quatrefages we have only space to devote a
paragraph. Originally contributed to the _Revue des Deux Mondes_,
it bears the marks in its inferences, if not in its facts, of being
composed for an audience of sympathizing countrymen, rather than for
the world of science at large. M. Quatrefages says that the first
dwellers in Prussia were Finns, who founded the stock, and were in
turn overpowered by the Slavs, who imposed their language and customs
on the whole of the Baltic region. The consequent mixture of Finns and
Slavs created a population wholly un-German; and what dash of genuine
Germanism Prussia now has was subsequently acquired in the persons of
sundry traders from Bremen, followed by a class of roving nobility,
who entered the half-civilized country with their retainers in quest
of spoils. Besides these elements, Prussia, like England and America,
received in modern times an influx of French Huguenots; which M.
Quatrefages naturally considers a piece of great good fortune for
Prussia. Briefly, then, the French savant regards Prussia as German
only in her nobility and upper-middle classes, while the substratum
of population is a composition of Slav and Finn, and hence thoroughly
anti-German. As, according to the old saying, if you scratch a Russian
you will find a Tartar beneath, so, according to M. Ouatrefages,
we may suppose that scraping a Prussian would disclose a Finn. The
political inferences which he draws are very fanciful. He traces
shadowy analogies between the tactics of Von Moltke's veterans and
the warlike customs of the ancient Slavs, and suggests that the basic
origin of the Prussian population may lead it to cultivate a Russian
alliance rather than an Austrian, forgetting, apparently, that by
his own admission the ruling-classes of Prussia are German in origin,
ideas and sympathies.

L.S.