relations to other races have been much discussed. On this subject I have received from my learned friend, the renowned philologist Professor AHLQUIST of Helsingfors the following communication:—
The Samoyeds are reckoned, along with the Tungoose, the Mongolian, the Turkish and the Finnish-Ugrian races, to belong to the so-called Altaic or Ural-Altaic stem. What is mainly characteristic of this stem, is that all the languages occurring within it belong to the so-called agglutinating type. For in these languages the relations of ideas are expressed exclusively by terminations or suffixes—inflections, prefixes and prepositions, as expressive of relations, being completely unknown to them. Other peculiarities characteristic of the Altaic languages are the vocal harmony occurring in many of them, the inability to have more than one consonant in the beginning of a word, and the expression of the plural by a peculiar affix, the case terminations being the same in the plural as in the singular. The affinity between the different branches of the Altaic stem is thus founded mainly on analogy or resemblance in the construction of the languages, while the different tongues in the material of language (both in the words themselves and in the expression of relations) show a very limited affinity or none at all. The circumstance that the Samoyeds for the present have as their nearest neighbours several Finnish-Ugrian races (Lapps, Syrjaeni, Ostjaks, and Voguls), and that these to a great extent carry on the same modes of life as themselves, has led some authors to assume a close affinity between the Samoyeds and the Fins and the Finnish races in general. The speech of the two neighbouring tribes however affords no ground for such a supposition. Even the language of the Ostjak, which is the most closely related to that of the Samoyeds, is separated heaven-wide from it and has nothing in common with it, except a small number of borrowed words (chiefly names of articles from the Polar nomad's life), which the Ostjak has taken from the language of his northern neighbour. With respect to their language, however, the Samoyeds are said to stand at a like distance from the other branches of the stem in question. To what extent craniology or the modern anthropology can more accurately determine the affinity-relationship of the Samoyed to other tribes, is still a question of the future.
FOOTNOTES:
[53] "Letter of Richard Finch to Sir Thomas Smith, Governor; and to the rest of the Worshipful Companie of English Merchants, trading into Russia." Purchas, iii. p. 534.
[54] Mr. Serebrenikoff writes Samodin instead of Samoyed, considering the latter name incorrect. For Samoyed means "self-eater," while Samodin denotes "an individual," "one who cannot be mistaken for any other," and, as the Samoyeds never were cannibals, Mr. Serebrenikoff gives a preference to the latter name, which is used by the Russians at Chabarova, and appears to be a literal translation of the name which the Samoyeds give themselves. I consider it probable, however, that the old tradition of man-eaters (androphagi) living in the north, which originated with Herodotus, and was afterwards universally adopted in the geographical literature of the middle ages, reappears in a Russianised form in the name "Samoyed." (Compare what is quoted further on from Giles Fletcher's narrative).
[55] This name, which properly denotes a coarse likeness, has passed into the Swedish, the word bulvan being one of the few which that language has borrowed from the Russian.