One of the most important is drawn from philology. The three fundamental forms of human language are found in the same countries and under similar relations. In the centre, and south-east of our area, the monosyllabic languages are represented by those of China, Cochinchina, Siam and Thibet. As agglutinative languages, we find in the north-east and north-west the group of Ougro-Japanese, in the south that of the Dravidian and Malay, and in the west the Turkish languages. Lastly, Sanscrit with its derivatives, and the Iranian languages represent in the south and south-west the inflectional languages. It is to the linguistic types gathered round the central region of Asia that all human languages must be referred; whether from their vocabulary or their grammar, some of these Asiatic languages bear a close resemblance to languages spoken in regions often very distant, or separated from the area in question by entirely different languages. We know that several philologists, M. Maury among others, establish an intimate connection between the Dravidian languages and Australian idioms, and that M. Picot has discovered numbers of Aryan words in our oldest European languages. Finally, it is from Asia again that our earliest domesticated animals are derived. Isidore Geoffroy is entirely agreed with Dureau de la Malle upon this point. Thus, the present epoch alone considered, everything points to this great central plateau, or rather to this great enclosure. There, we are inclined to say, the first human beings appeared and multiplied till the populations overflowed as from a bowl and spread themselves in human waves in every direction. IX. Palæontological studies have, however, very recently led to results which are capable of modifying these primary conclusions. MM. Heer and de Saporta have informed us that in the Tertiary period Siberia and Spitzbergen were covered with plants, indicating a temperate climate. MM. Murchison, Keyserlink, de Verneuil, and d’Archiac tell us that, during the same period, the _barren-lands_ of our day supported large herbivorous animals, such as the reindeer, the mammoth, and the tichorhine rhinoceros. All these animals made their appearance at the commencement of the Quaternary period. It seems to me that they did not come alone.