If such a transformation had ever taken place, it would, indeed, be astonishing and inexplicable even to those who ascribe the least stability to types, for it must have occurred within the last 800 years, during which we know that the compatriots of St. Stephen[161] mixed but little with surrounding nations. But the whole course of reasoning is based upon false premises, for the Hungarians are most assuredly not of Finnic origin. Mr. A. De Gérando[162] has placed this fact beyond doubt. He has proved, by the authority of Greek and Arab historians, as well as Hungarian annalists and by indisputable philological arguments, that the Magyars are a fragment of that great inundation of nations which swept over Europe under the denomination of Huns. It will be objected that this is merely giving the Hungarians another parentage, but which connects them no less intimately with the yellow race. Such is not the case. The designation of Huns applies not only to a nation, but is also a collective appellation of a very heterogeneous mass. Among the tribes which rallied around the standards of Attila and his ancestors, there were some which have at all times been distinguished from the rest by the term _white Huns_. Among them the Germanic blood predominated.[163] It is true, that the close contact with the yellow race somewhat adulterated the breed; but this very fact is singularly exhibited in the somewhat angular and bony facial conformation of the Hungarians. I conclude, therefore, that the Magyars were _white Huns_, and of Germanic origin, though slightly mixed with the Mongolian stock. The philological difficulty of their speaking a non-Germanic dialect is not insurmountable. I have already alluded to the Mongolian Scyths who yet spoke an Arian tongue;[164] I might, moreover, cite the Norman settlers in France who, not many years after their conquest, exchanged their Scandinavian dialect, in a great measure, for the Celto-Latin of their subjects,[165] whence sprang that singular compound called Norman-French, which the followers of William the Conqueror imported into England, and which now forms an element of the English language. There is, therefore, no reason to suppose that the agency of climate and change of habits have transformed a Laplander, or an Ostiak, or a Tunguse, or a Permian, into a St. Stephen or a Kossuth.