The term Dioscurian is taken from the ancient sea-port Dioscurias. Here it was that the chief commerce between the Greeks and Romans, and the natives of the Caucasian range took place. According to Pliny,[36] it was carried on by one hundred and thirty interpreters, so numerous were the languages. Without raising the number thus high, the great multiplicity of mutually unintelligible tongues is still one of the characteristics of the parts in question. And this fact has determined the application of the term. To have used the word _Caucasian_ would have been correct, but inconvenient. It is already _mis_-applied in another sense, _i.e._, for the sake of denoting the so-called Caucasian race, consisting, or said to consist, of Jews, Greeks, Circassians, Scotchmen, ancient Romans, and other heterogeneous elements. In this sense it has been used in more than one celebrated work of fiction. In such, and in such only, it is otherwise than out of place. DIOSCURIAN NATIONS AND TRIBES. _Physical Conformation._--Modified Mongol. _Languages._--Paurosyllabic,[37] agglutinate; of all the tongues _not_ Seriform, the nearest approaching to an aptotic state. _Area._--The range of Mount Caucasus. _Chief Divisions._--1. The Georgians. 2. The Lesgians. 3. The Mizjeji. 4. The Irôn. 5. The Circassians. In few, perhaps, in no part of the present volume, am I on more debateable ground than the present. So long has the term Caucasian been considered to denote a type of physical conformation closely akin to that of the Iapetidæ, (_i.e._, preeminently European,) that to place the Georgians and Circassians in the midst of the Mongolidæ, is a paradox. Again, the popular notions founded upon the physical beauty of the tribes under notice, are against such a juxtaposition; the typical Mongolians, in this respect, having never been mentioned by either poet or painter in the language of praise. Lastly, it so happens that some of the latest researches in comparative philology have been undertaken with the special object of making the philological position of the Dioscurians coincide with their anatomical one, _i.e._, of proving that the languages of the Georgians and the Irôn are to be connected with that of the Greeks and Latins, just as was the case with their skeletons. For the sake of laying before the reader the amount of fact and argument, in contradistinction to the amount of mere opinion, that is opposed by the position here assumed for the Dioscurians, I will analyse the grounds for the current belief under two heads:--