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have come into close contact with the Russians seem to be deteriorating. Laziness leads to dishonesty, and both tend to insolence and vulgarity. A change of habits, too, causes greater uncleanliness, for customs that may be harmless where a camp is shifted every month or oftener, lead to filthiness where a kibitka stays for six months or a year in one place. Change of any kind is always difficult, especially for people like the Khirghiz, who have adapted themselves completely to a type of physiographic conditions so unusual as those of the Tian Shan plateau.
Not only the outward habits of life, but also certain mental and moral qualities of the Khirghiz are due largely, if not entirely, to physical environment. We will now take up one or two among the many subjects where such a relation does not at first sight appear, although I believe that it exists. In determining the mental and moral character of a people, no factor is more important than the position of women, and the resulting character of the homes in which the children grow up. If the position, and hence the character, of women is materially affected by physiographic environment, it follows that a host of other characteristics must be indirectly affected through the tremendous agency of the home and of early training. I freely admit that religion, heredity, tradition, and perhaps other unknown factors play an immense part in determining the character of a race, but these, too, in their origin and growth have probably been greatly influenced by physical environment. With that, however, we are not now concerned. It will be enough to point out certain ways in which the physiography of the Tian Shan plateau, working through the institutions
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