It only remains to add that this invasion of Germany by Cain’s progeny was accomplished in three streams.  The Ases (Sachsons) directed themselves to the Elbe and Danube, and thence to the north; the Suevi, or Swabians, chose the centre and south of Germany; while the Goths did not rest till they had overrun Italy, Southern France and Spain.  But each of these three main streams was composed of many tribes, whom the old writers catalogue without system, mixing both Celtic and Teutonic tribes under the 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.