270 BRITISH ETHNOLOGY. v 



guage of the Aquitanians and Spaniards, and may 

 possibly have extended much further to the East. 

 "Whether it has any connection with the Lignrian 

 and Oscan dialects are questions upon which, of 

 course, I do not presume to offer any opinion. But 

 it is important to remark that it is a language the 

 area of which has gradually diminished without any 

 corresponding extirpation of the people who primi- 

 tively spoke it; so that the people of Spain and of 

 Aquitaine at the present day must be largely " Eu- 

 skarian " by descent in just the same sense as the 

 Cornish men are " Celtic " by descent. 



Such seem to me to be the main facts respect- 

 ing the ethnology of the British islands and of 

 Western Europe, which may be said to be fairly 

 established. The hypothesis by which I think 

 (with De Belloguet and Thurnam) the facts may 

 best be explained is this: In very remote times 

 Western Europe and the British islands were inhab- 

 ited by the dark stock, or the Melanochroi, alone, 

 and these Melanochroi spoke dialects allied to the 

 Euskarian. The Xanthochroi, spreading over the 

 great Eurasiatic plains westward, and speaking 

 Aryan dialects, gradually invaded the territories 

 of the Melanochroi. The Xanthochroi, who thus 

 came into contact with the Western Melanochroi, 

 spoke a Celtic language; and that Celtic language, 

 whether Cymric or Gaelic, spread over the Melano- 

 chroi far beyond the limits of intermixture of blood, 

 supplanting Euskarian, just as English and French 



