Except in language, the Samoeid of the Arctic Circle differs but little from the Lapp, and even this difference has lately been shown to be less than was previously supposed. In manners they are somewhat ruder; whilst their Christianity is far more incomplete. Indeed, the old Shamanistic Paganism is their dominant religion. This they share with the Ostiaks, their neighbours on the south. But the most important fact connected with the Samoeids is their distribution and affinities. Along with populations more or less closely allied to them, they originally covered the whole of the vast region of Siberia; a region even at present occupied by them partially, and in detached localities, though the greater part of it is in possession of Mongol, Turk, and Tungusian populations--populations whose primary homes were in Central, rather than Northern Asia, but who have in all cases pressed northwards, and, in some, reached as far as the shores of the Arctic Sea. But as their occupation is incomplete, isolated fragments of the original populations still remain. Some of these are absolutely Samoeid, _i.e._, belonging to the same division of the same branch of the Ugrian stock. Others belong to different divisions. All, however, agree in speaking a language more akin to each other than to the Turks, Mongols, and Tungusians, by whom they are surrounded or separated. The particular affinities of the Samoeids are with the Koibal, Kamash, and other tribes of Southern Siberia on the upper part of the Yenesey and on the very frontier of the Chinese empire. Between these and the Samoeids of Arkhangel the population belongs to the class called _Yeneseian_. Now the language of the Yeneseians, though less like that of either of the Samoeid branches, than they are to each other, is still Ugrian rather than Turk, Mongol, or Tungusian. The same remark applies to a population as far east as the Kolyma, the Jukahiri. It is more Ugrian than Turk; yet the Yakut Turk of the Lena, rather than any Ugrian tongue, is the language with which it is in geographical contact. Lastly, it should be added that, according to a table of Ermann’s, the language of the Ugrian Ostiaks of the Obi, is more like that of the Kamskadales of Kamskatka than it is to the Turk tongues by which it is most immediately bounded. The inferences from all this are enormous extension and subsequent displacement of the Ugrian family.