The Ordovician and Silurian systems are widely developed, and it is most probable that, with the exception of the Archean continents of Finland and the S, the sea covered the whole of Russia.
The Gulf of Riga and the Baltic belong also to territory which is not inhabited by Sla y s, but by Finnish races and by Germans.
The overwhelming numerical superiority of the Sla y s, and the very great differences in ethnical type, belief and mythology between the IndoEuropean and the Ural-Altaic races, may have contributed to the same end.
In the following year, however, the situation was completely altered, a result due to the growing anti-Polish feeling in the Duma and, more especially, to the support given by the Austrian Sla y s to the annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
It must be added that the pages on the Slavonic peoples and their relations to the empire are conspicuously insufficient; but it must be taken into account that it was not till many years after Gibbon's death that Slavonic history began to receive due attention, in consequence of the rise of competent scholars among the Sla y s themselves.
