RECENT ADVANCES IN SCIENCE 463 



Nyasaland are described, and are compared with the similar 

 stories from the Kikuyu district, which were recorded in a 

 previous number of Man, and which I mentioned in Science 

 Progress for July 191 5. The author comes to the conclusion 

 that the origin of these legends is to be found in the real exist- 

 ence of a dwarf race in these countries in early times, and 

 there is much to be said for this thesis. Moreover, as Dr. 

 Stannus says, the same explanation is applicable to the Euro- 

 pean traditions of strange wild dwarfs. Gnomes are not the 

 product of our ancestors' imaginations ; they actually existed. 

 Soon after the outbreak of the present war, certain persons 

 took advantage of the passions raised to advocate in the 

 popular press the heretical theory that the English are not 

 a mainly Teutonic, but a chiefly Keltic (or Kelto-Iberian) 

 nation, and are racially more akin to the French than to the 

 Germans. In the September Man there is a paper (written 

 in French) by F. Romanet du Caillaud, taking this view of 

 the matter, and entitled " De Tidentite des races qui ont forme 

 les nationalites britannique et francaise." The argument is 

 not convincing, and indeed the superficiality of the essay 

 may be judged from the fact that there is no mention of the 

 Iberian ingredient in either the French or the British popula- 

 tion, and M. du Caillaud does not tell us what he means by 

 the Keltic type. The races which have gone to form the 

 two nationalities are, no doubt, almost " identical," but they 

 have been mixed in very different proportions in the two 

 countries. When J. R. Green, the historian, said of Anglo- 

 Saxon England that " it was the one purely German nation 

 that rose upon the wreck of Rome," he probably went too 

 far, but he was more nearly right than the old school, now 

 resuscitated, which began English history with the Ancient 

 Britons. The English conquest of England and the Frankish 

 conquest of France were quite unlike. The early English 

 polity was purely Pagan Teutonic, and there is every reason 

 to suppose that the population of the eastern three-fourths 

 of England and of south-eastern Scotland was mainly Teutonic 

 in blood also, though probably not to the extent that Green 

 thought. Of course the Germanic infusion was small in 

 Ireland, and smaller in Wales, but the bulk of the British 

 population is in England. The truth is that in view of the 

 great mixture of races in all the larger countries of Europe 



