Original area.—The northward extension of the present Circassian area is limited by the Russians and the Nogay Turks. Now, as each of these areas has encroached, it is reasonable to believe that, at an earlier period, Circassian tribes may have extended further northward than at present. At the same time we must be careful not to carry them too far; otherwise we infringe the area of the Scythians, Sarmatians, and other nations of antiquity; who, whatever else they were, were not very likely to have been Circassian. Some point between the Cuban and the Don is the likeliest limit for the most northern Circassians. The old line of frontier on the Caucasian side is incapable of determination.

Amongst the ancestors of the present Circassians are, most probably, the Zychi (Achæi), Abasgi, Heniochi, Cercetæ, Makropogones, Sindians, &c.

The question as to the original population of the country which now separates the nearest point of the Dioscurian area from the Seriform, will be considered in the section upon the distribution of the Iranian portion of the Indo-European division of the Iapetidæ. The following is a selection of words common to the Dioscurian and Aptotic languages:—

FOOTNOTES:

[36] Gibbon, Decline and Fall, chap. 52.

[37] From pauros=few, and syllabæ=syllable.

[38] Dialects of the Georgian.

[39] It is a general accredited fact, that in some cardinals we have the sign of the ordinal. Thus the -m in dece-m, as compared with δέκα, is reasonably supposed to be the -m- in deci-m-us.