or Chuni, in English, Huas, the collective name of several nomadic Scythian tribes, who contributed powerfully to the overthrow of the Roman empire of the West in the first half of the fifth century. Their early history is very obscure. They seem to have belonged undoubtedly to the Mongolian family, and their habits, appearance, and physical characteristics, as described by their contemporaries, confirm the idea. The great plains of Tartary, on the confines of China, are assigned as the cradle of the race, which, long before the Christian Era, had grown strong enough to keep its neighbours in constant alarm. The Chinese, who had suffered particularly, are said to have built the Great Wall (about 200 B.C.) to secure themselves from their incessant attacks. Driven back on this side, the Huns now directed their course to the West, and about the middle of the fourth century are found settled in the country lying between the Caspian Sea and the River Dniester. For about sixty years from this date they were chiefly occupied in defending their new settlements from the attacks of the neighbouring tribes. The most formidable of these, the Alan, a tribe of kindred blood to the Huns themselves, were, after many sanguinary contests, nearly annihilated. Such of them as survived the war were incorporated with the conquerors. About the year 376, the Huns, pursuing their westward course, attacked the Gothic tribes on the northern side of the Danube. The Visigoths, to the number of 200,000, took refuge in the Roman territories, where lands were allotted to them; and the Gruthungi, or Ostrogoths, soon followed their example. Reinforcing their ranks from the other hordes that joined them, and for a time making common cause with the Goths, the Huns next attacked the Romans, and, in a great battle near Adrianople, slew the emperor Valens. Their power continued steadily to increase till about the middle of the fifth century, when it culminated under Attila. (See Attila, and Roman History.) After his death, the various tribes which his genius had amalgamated into one people became broken up and dispersed, and, being attacked in detail by the Goths, who hated and feared them as much as the Romans did, they were driven back across the Don. Some of them settled in Pannonia, and left an enduring trace of their presence in the name of the country now called Hungary. A branch of the Hun family, known as the Nephthalite or White Huns (whose physical characteristics were in many respects different from those of the Huns Proper), are found invading Persia in the reign of Firenze, but before the middle of the sixth century they cease to be mentioned in history, and were practically extinct. (See Ammianus Marcellinus; Priscus; Gibbon; De Guignes' Histoire des Huns; Neumann's Die Volker des Sudlichen Russlands; and R. G. Latham in Smith's Dict. of Geog.)