218 METHODS AND RESULTS OF ETHNOLOGY. 



amount of Kelticism, not found in our tongue, very 

 probably exists in our pedigrees. The ethnology of 

 France is still more complicated. Many writers make the 

 Parisian a Roman on the strength of his language; whilst 

 others make him a Kelt on the strength of certain moral 

 characteristics, combined with the previous Kelticism of 

 the original Gauls. Spanish and Portuguese, as languages, 

 are derivations from the Latin; Spain and Portugal, as 

 countries, are Iberic, Latin, Gothic, and Arab, in dif- 

 ferent proportions. Italian is modern Latin all the world 

 over; yet surely there must be much Keltic blood in 

 Lombardy, and much Etruscan intermixture in Tuscany. 

 " In the ninth century every man between the Elbe 

 and the Niemen spoke some Slavonic dialect; they now 

 nearly all speak German. Surely the blood is less ex- 

 clusively Gothic than the speech." * 



In other words, what philologer, if he had noth- 

 ing but the vocabulary and grammar of the French 

 and English languages to guide him, would dream 

 of the real causes of the unlikeness of a Norman to 

 a Provengal, of an Orcadian to a Cornishman? 

 How readily might he be led to suppose that the 

 different climatal conditions to which these speak- 

 ers of one tongue have so long been exposed, have 

 caused their physical differences; and how little 

 would he suspect that these are due (as we happen 

 to know they are) to wide differences of blood. 



Few take duly into account the evidence which 

 exists as to the ease with which unlettered savages 

 gain or lose a language. Captain Erskine, in his 

 interesting " Journal of a Cruise among the Islands 



•Latham, Man and his Migrations, p. 171. 



