B. WESTERN STEM.

I. CZEKHO-SLOVAKIAN BRANCH.

1.  BOHEMIANS and MORAVIANS (Czekhes).  These are the Slavic inhabitants of the kingdom of Bohemia and the Margravate of Moravia, both belonging to the Austrian empire.  They are about four and a half millions in number; of whom 100,000 are Protestants, the rest Catholics.  Schaffarik includes also 44,000 of the Slavic inhabitants of Prussian Silesia in this race.

2.  SLOVAKS.  Almost all the northern part of Hungary is inhabited by Slovaks:  besides this they are scattered through the whole of that country, and speak different dialects.  They are reckoned at between two and three millions.

II.  POLISH OR LEKHIAN BRANCH.

This comprises the inhabitants of the present kingdom of Poland; of a part of what are called since 1772 the Russian-Polish provinces; of the duchy of Posen; and of Galicia and Ludomeria.  The bulk of the people in this latter country are Russniaks or Ruthenians.  In the Russian provinces, which were formerly called White Russia, Black Russia, and Red Russia, and were conquered by the Poles in former times, the peasantry are Russians and Russniaks; in Lithuania, they are Lithuanians or Lettones, a race of a different family of nations.  In all these countries, only the nobility and inhabitants of the cities are really Poles, or Slavi of the Leckian race.  To the same race belongs also the Polish population of Silesia, and an isolated tribe in the Prussian province of Pomerania, called the Kassubes.  The Slavi of the Leckian race hardly amount to the number of ten millions; all Catholics, with the exception of about half a million of Protestants.

II.  SORABIAN-VENDISH BRANCH.

There are remnants of the old Sorabae; and several other Slavic races in Lusatia and some parts of Brandenburg.  Their number is less than 2,000,000; divided between Protestants and Catholics.

There is no doubt, that besides the races here enumerated, there are Slavic tribes scattered through Germany, Transylvania, Moldavia, and Walachia, nay, through the whole of Turkey.  Thus, for instance, the Tchaconic dialect, spoken in the eastern part of ancient Sparta and unintelligible to the other Greeks, has been proved by one of the most distinguished philologists to have been of Slavic origin.[12] But to ascertain their number, at any rate very small, would be a matter of impossibility, and in every respect of little consequence.