Podolia, Kiev, Pultava, Kharkhov, are what is called Malorussian, or _Little_ Russian. The dialect differs notably from that of the Muscovite of the central governments, and has its affinities in a different direction, since it very closely resembles the Russniak of Gallicia. And in Gallicia it probably originated. At the same time the three dialects, the Russniak, the Maloruss, and the Muscovite (or Great Russian) are mutually intelligible. Between these two branches of the Russian family a strong national antipathy exists. In Volhynia the dialect is the White Russian, and so it is in those parts of Lithuania where the Lithuanian is out of use. The true and proper Russian of Great Russia, or Muscovy, the language of the capitals, and the language which the conquests of Russia have extended over all Northern Asia, and even into North-western America, circumscribed, as it has been shown to be, by the languages and dialects which have just been enumerated, is still spoken over a vast area--over all the central provinces of Russia, as well as on the Baltic and the Euxine, at St. Petersburg and at Odessa. It is generally, too, the language of the towns. But, for a language of so vast an area, it falls into a remarkably small number of dialects. In Olonetz it is mixed with the Fin, since the Fin is the original language of that government; and, in Vladimir, the Suzdal dialect exhibits certain peculiarities; but, with these, and, perhaps, a few other exceptions, the uniformity is complete. This is _primâ facie_ evidence of its introduction being recent; a fact which the whole history of ancient Russia confirms; indeed, it is highly probable that no truly Slavonic nation (not even the Malorussians) occupied any portion of their present possessions anterior to the fourth century of the Christian era. If so, how was the area first filled? By the Lithuanians and the Ugrians; by the Lithuanians extending from the west eastwards, and by the Ugrians extending from the east westwards. By this hypothesis the two populations met in some of the central provinces, though it is difficult to fix the absolute points of contact. Nor were the Slavonians even the first invaders who disturbed this distribution; since Turk populations _different from and earlier than the Turks of the thirteenth century_ were settled in Southern Russia in the fifth century B.C., _i.e._, at the very beginning of the historical period. Neither do I press the absolute exclusion of stocks other than the Lithuanian and the Ugrian so strongly as to deny the likelihood of the aborigines of the Crimea and some of the neighbouring districts having been members of the same stock as the Circassians and the other tribes of Caucasus. Little, however, depends on this.