Some time ago I ventured to print a monograph on the Avars in the Journal of the Asiatic Society. I should now like to continue the story by analyzing the difficult ethnological and historical problems involved in discriminating the races which occupied the Steppes of South-eastern Europe before the arrival of the Avars. The question has exercised many inquirers, nor does it seem to me that a final and definite answer can be reached, but we can at all events secure a tentative solution of the problem.