in Lapland. They were skilled in the use of the divining drum, which was of oval shape, 1 to 4 feet long, and hung all round with charms, tufts of wool, bones, teeth, claws, and the like. The wizards had also a very powerful spell for raising storms, thus described by quaint old Richard Eden: "They tie three knots on a string hanging at a whip. When they loose one of these they raise tolerable winds; when they loose another the wind is more vehement; but by loosing the third they raise plain tempests, as in old time they were accustomed to raise thunder and lightning."

But all this has long passed away, and at all events since the beginning of the present century the whole nation has been Christian-Lutherans in Scandinavia, "Orthodox Greek" in Russia. With heathendom polygamy and polyandria have also ceased to be practised, and indeed would not now be tolerated by the civil authorities. Hence Mr. Frank Vincent must have been the victim of some strange hallucination when he discovered these usages still surviving among the Lapps recently visited by him. Polygamy," he says in one place, "is still in vogue, and marriageable girls are often sold by their parents. The daughter of a rich man costs a hundred reindeer; that of a poor man about twenty" ("Norsk, Lapp, and Finn," p. 134). And elsewhere we are assured that one of the causes of the dwindling of the Lapp race is "the practice of polyandry" (p. 152). These statements I am in a position to say are absolutely groundless, although marriage is certainly still looked upon as largely a matter of business rather than a religious ceremony, as might be expected from the thrifty habits of the people.

Traces even survive of the times when abduction, originally real, afterwards feigned, formed an essential part of the marriage rites. Thus of Laila, the heroine of Friis' tale, we are told that she resisted and would not put on the wedding-ring, which was in accordance with custom. "For a Finn [Lapp] bride is expected to resist when they come to dress her. She ought to weep and lament and declare that she does not wish to be married; but at last she allows herself to be led to the altar."

'It happened once," he goes on to say, "that a bride when asked by the pastor at the altar if she would like N. N. to be her wedded husband, answered No! Well, then, I cannot marry you,' said the pastor. 'Oh,' said the bride, 'I expected you to put the question again (p. 233).

All this is but the faint echo of the days when they were carried off forcibly and shouted No! in right earnest. Then came the stage when they pretended to resist, and so on to the present time, when some are still found who expect to be asked twice.

Christianity was first introduced about the year 1714 among the Norwegian Lapps by the Danish missionary, Thomas von Westen, who is regarded as the apostle of the nation. Since then missions have everywhere been kept up, and with the spread of the Gospel education also has been gradually diffused among the people. In Russia they are certainly no better instructed than their neighbours. But in Norway and Sweden nearly all can at least read and write. All the adult members of the Anti group know their letters well, as I have been able to satisfy myself by a practical test. But the Mountain Lapps appear to care very little for "scholarship," and, except the rising generation, none amongst them turn their proficiency to any useful purpose.

Language.

They have, however, almost universally preserved the national speech, notwithstanding the great efforts formerly made by the Swedish and Norwegian governments to force the Scandinavian tongues upon them. "Hereafter both you and your children must learn Norwegian," says Pastor Hard Hjorth, one of the characters in "Laila." 'Why should we learn Norwegian?' retorts his interlocutor Logje; we are satisfied with our own language." Because Norwegian is the better, the more copious, and the more useful tongue?" "Norwegian is not better for us and for our mode of life. Your language is a bad one when one has to talk of reindeer, of hill and valley, of the light of day, and of the darkness of night, and of all that pertains to our ordinary life. You have not one word for our ten about reindeer and many other things.10 Is such a language rich? No! it is a poor one for us."

And so thought Logje's fellow-countrymen generally, who have continued faithful to their mother-tongue, although more than once officially suppressed and although at one time children were enjoined to receive religious instruction exclusively in Norwegian.

In its structure Lapp is clearly a member of the FinnoTataric linguistic family closely allied on the one hand to Finnish, on the other to the Mordvinian, of the Volga basin, and the Samoyede, of the Siberian tundras. But from remote times. its vocabulary has been largely affected, especially by Norse elements. By a critical study of these elements Von Güben has endeavoured to determine the state of Lapp culture when the race first came in contact with the Scandinavian peoples. Thus he finds that at that time the Lapps must have been pure nomads, with no knowledge of agriculture, of the metals, of

tanning, or even of stock-breeding or reindeer farming, in the strict sense of the expression; for all terms connected with husbandry, metal-working, the names of the metals, and even of milk, are of Norse derivation.

As in most Uralo-Altaic tongues, verbal forms are very numerous, Lappish in this respect rivalling even Finnish and Turkish themselves. Besides dual and plural personal endings, there are transitives, intransitives, causals, diminutives, inchoatives, passives, negatives, and many others, all formed by agglutination upon a single unmodified root. Thus: laitet = to guide; laitestet = to guide a little ; laitekätet = to begin to guide; laitetallet to be guided, and so on.

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A curious feature is the inflexion of adverbs and other particles mostly undeclinable in the Aryan family. Thus: kukke long, far; kukket from afar; kukkas far away, as in wuoyeti kukkas muste = go far away from me. All particles are suffixed to the root, so that there are no prepositions, but only agglutinated postpositions, as in mokum, tokum, sokum, corresponding in sense, and, curiously enough, in sound, to the Latin mecum, tecum, secum. This is one of those singular coincidences which etymologists of the old school are so fond of seizing upon, although this particular case seems to have hitherto escaped their notice.

The language has been reduced to writing by the missionaries; but in it little has hitherto been composed except school books, devotional and religious works, besides some popular tales, songs, and folklore taken down from the mouth of the people by Grönland and other collectors.

Lappish is spoken with considerable dialectic variety in Russia, Sweden, and Norway. Even in the latter country the Finmarken dialect differs so much from that of Rörös that the inhabitants of the two districts can hardly understand each other. But the languages of the more cultured nations are everywhere encroaching on the domain of the national speech, and the process is naturally stimulated by the spread of education. Both in Norway and Sweden civilised Lapps are already found, who feel ashamed of their ruder kindred, and thus must inevitably become absorbed in the surrounding Norse populations.

Prospects.

Thus it requires no great gift of prophecy to foretell the fate in store for these kindly and inoffensive nomads. Primitive peoples who have lagged behind in the race become extinct or disappear, either by extermination, by slow decay, or by absorption. There is no danger of their being exterminated, as were

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the Tasmanians during the first half of the present century; for the Lapps are now treated with perfect justice, and by their respective governments protected from unscrupulous speculators. Nor is it at all likely that they will die out through inanition, as it were, like the Ahts of Vancouver's Island, and so many inhabitants of Polynesia; for they are a hardy and healthy race, free from any destructive endemics, and as full of vitality as their neighbours.

But their grazing-grounds are becoming slowly exhausted; their domain is being encroached upon by the surrounding populations, whose speech and usages they are adopting; they are being steadily crowded out, or driven to exchange their nomad habits for a settled life. The sedentary far outnumber the wandering communities, and a sedentary Lapp is already half a Norseman. Once they take to agricultural pursuits, the process of assimilation goes on apace, and must be continued until the whole race has been completely merged in the more numerous and progressive Scandinavian populations. With it must also disappear the reindeer, that most remarkable survival from pleistocene times, when it roamed over Central Europe in company with the cave bear and Elephas primigenius, the contemporary, if not already the associate, of the men of the stone age.

NOTES.

1 In fact in the mouth of the people themselves Lapp appears to be always used as a term of contempt or reproach. Hence it is not at all probable that it is of native origin. Otherwise it might possibly be connected with the Lappish root Lappek, which seems to have escaped the notice of commentators. This word means swamp, or fen, so that Lapp might still be taken as an alternative for Samé, and Lappe(k)-gunda would be equivalent to "Fin-land" (Fen-land). 2 Dr. P. A. Possart brings them even much farther south, and asserts with some old authorities that " Lappen als Grenzvolk, welches das Wort auch bedeutet, hat es unter Finnen und neben Finnen so südlich gegeben wie in Esthland [Esthonia], nachher in Finnland von dem Innern des finnischen Busens an bis zum Eismeere" (Lappländische Gram. Einleitung IV). It is even pretended by some authorities that the Fenni of Tacitus (Germania, 46) were really Lapps, and the further back inquiry is pushed the more difficult it becomes to distinguish between the two peoples, a fact which itself points at their primordial unity.

3 "Aus dem obern Finnland sind sie, besonders durch die Tawaster [Tavastians], seit noch nicht entfernter Zeit verdrängt worden; und dies ist jene Vertreibung aus Finnland, deren sich die Lappländer selbst erinnern" (Possart, loc. cit.).

And which appears to have been normally black in the time of Linné, who briefly describes the Lapps as characterised by "capillis nigris, brevibus, rectis." The hair is still mostly "short and straight," but far from uniformly "black."

66

It is noteworthy, however, that, under various names, such as Wu-sun, U-sun, Hiong-nu, &c., the Chinese records speak of ancient races on their northern frontier as characterised by fair complexion, "red" hair, green" eyes, and tall stature. These races are identified by some with the "Chudes," a collective term applied by the Russians to all the Finnish peoples, who might

consequently have acquired such traits even before their arrival in Europe. A florid complexion is still also common enough among the Manchus, Koreans, Rui-Kiu Islanders, Ainos and other north-eastern Asiatic peoples, a circumstance which has given rise to the theory advocated by De Quatrefages and others of an earlier diffusion of the Caucasic stock throughout most of the Asiatic Continent. But this is one of the obscure points of Asiatic ethnology needing further elucidation, and which cannot here be discussed with advantage.

6 This statement, which anthropologists were slow to accept, has received fresh confirmation from the discovery of a fossil skeleton at Castenedolo, six miles south-east of Brescia, by Professor Ragazzoni, on February 16th, 1880, and recently examined by Professor G. Serpi, who pronounces the type to be distinctly human and dolichocephalic with index 71.97 ("L'Uomo terziario in Lombardia," reprinted from "L'Archivio per l'Antropologia," xiv, 3, 1884).

7 The passage, which is of great historic interest, occurs in the "Gothic Wars," Book II, 15 : Τῶν δὲ ἱδρυμένων ἐν Θούλῃ βαρβάρων ἕν μόνον ἔθνος, οἳ Σκριθίφινοι, θηριώδη τινὰ βιοτὴν ἔχουσιν. Οὐ γὰρ σιτίζονται Σκριθιφίνων παιδία γυναικῶν γαλακτι οὐδὲ μητέρων ἁπτονται τιτθοῦ, ἀλλὰ ζῴων τῶν ἁλισκομένων τοῖς μυελοῖς ἐκτρέφονται μόνοις. ἐπειδὰν οὖν γυνὴ τάχιστα τέκοι, δέρματι το βρέφος εμβαλλομένη κρεμᾷ μὲν εὐθὺς ἐπί δένδρου τινὸς, &c. It is noteworthy that these "Skrithiphinoi" are by Procopius here placed in his "Thule," elsewhere said to be a vast "island" far larger than Britain, a description obviously applicable only to the Scandinavian peninsula at that time (sixth century) still supposed to be entirely surrounded by water.

8 Thus in one of the Sagas quoted by Von Güben a Norse hero exclaims, Skriða Kann eg á skíðum, “Stride can I on skates."

9.66 History of Travel," 1577, p. 284; spelling modernised.

10 Thus besides the general terms påtso, sarwa, herke, &c., for reindeer, luotvot is the young fawn, mese the yearling, orrek, vuopperes, kållotes, kosetes, makanes, nammo-lappeye, the animal in its 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th, and 7th year respectively. There occur 20 words for ice, 11 for cold, 41 for snow in all its forms, 26 verbs to express freezing and thawing, and so on.

The following paper was then read by the author:

On the PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS of the LAPPS. By J. G. GARSON, M.D., F.Z.S., M.A.I.; Lecturer on Comparative Anatomy, Charing Cross Hospital; Royal College of Surgeons of England.

THE Lapps examined by me in conjunction with Professor Keane at the Alexandra Palace were three males and two females. Two of the males were adults, their ages being fortyfour and thirty-one years respectively; the third was a young man of twenty years. The two females were adults. All of them were fairly well developed, the elder woman being the sparest of the group.

The colour of the eyes differs considerably, being brown with a greenish tinge in the two adult males, gray in the youth, and brown in the two women, those of the elder woman being of a darker shade than those of the younger.

The skin of the face is brownish, as is also that of the hands,