Each, however, is an extreme instance, and it is only at its extremities that the question is easy. In my own mind, I think that Getic legends and Getic history is the rule, Germanic the exception; in other words, that the so-called Gothic history is the history of the _indigenæ_ rather than that of the invaders of the soil. It is even likely that Hermanric’s empire was German only as the present Austrian empire is German, _i.e._, German in respect to its chief. Zengis-Khan’s was Mongolian in the same way, the mass of his subjects and major part of his area being Turk. What leads to this is the likelihood of even the names of the royal families amongst the Ostrogoths and Visigoths--Amalung and Baltung--being Lithuanic. They have every appearance of having arisen out of _eponymias_. At any rate it is a strange coincidence to find one of the localities of the amber-district called sometimes _Abalus_, and sometimes _Baltia_--the latter name being connected with the _Belt_ and _Baltic_. Pliny (writes Prichard) “in giving an account of the production of amber says, that, according to Pytheas, there was an estuary of the ocean called Mentonomon, inhabited by the Guttones, a people of Germany. It reached six thousand furlongs in extent. From this place an island named Abalus was distant about one day’s sail, on the shore of which the waves throw up pieces of amber. The inhabitants make use of it for fuel, or else sell it to their neighbours the Teutones.” Pliny says that Timæus gave full credit to this story, but that “he called the island not Abalus, but Baltia.” Out of this _Abal-_, and this _Balt-_, I believe the eponymic names of _Abal_-ung (_Amal_-ung and _Balt_-ung) grew, just as Hellen did out of Hellas. And that they were other than German is shown by Tacitus, since the amber country was the country of the Æstyii, whose language was _Britannicæ proprior_--_Britannicæ_ meaning _Prussian_, as I have shown elsewhere. In bringing within the same class all the population denominated Gothini, Gothones, Guttones, Gothi, Gautæ, Gaudæ, Getæ, Jutæ, and Vitæ, I only do what nine out of ten of my predecessors have done before me. I differ, however, from them in determining the character of the class by that of the Guttones of the amber country, instead of that of the Goths of Alaric and Theodoric--these last being Goths only as the English are Britons, or the Spaniards, Mexicans. At the same time I am fully aware that any evidence whatever showing that the Germans of the Lower Danube were called _Goths_ anterior to their arrival in the land of the _Getæ_, would shake my doctrine, and that unexceptionable evidence would throw it to the ground altogether. The theory of the Scandinavian populations is different for the three different kingdoms.