THE STUDY OF MAN. 307 



as a phylogenetic, and sometimes as a linguistic species. In the 

 last-named sense, that to which I believe the use of the name 

 should be restricted, it is the appropriate designation of a group 

 of cognate languages spoken by peoples whose physical characters 

 show that they are not the descendants of one common phylum 

 in the near past. There are fair-haired, long-headed families in 

 Scotland and Ireland ; fair, broad-headed Bretons ; dark-haired, 

 round-headed Welshmen ; and dark-haired, long-headed people in 

 the outer Hebrides, McLeans, " Sancho Panza type " — men ob- 

 viously of different races, who differ not only in color, stature, 

 and skull-form, but whose traditions also point to a composite 

 descent, and yet all originally speaking a Celtic tongue. The use 

 of the word Celtic, as if it were the name of a phylogenetic 

 species, has naturally led to hopeless confusion in the attempts to 

 formulate race-characters for the Celtic skull — confusions of a 

 kind which tend to bring physical anthropology into discredit. 

 Thus Retzius characterizes the Celtic crania as being dolicho- 

 cephalic, and compares them with those of the modern Scandina- 

 vians. Sir Daniel Wilson considers the true Celtic type of skull 

 as intermediate between the dolichocephalic and the brachy- 

 cephali ; and Topinard figures as the typical Celtic skull that of 

 an Auvergnat, extremely brachycephalic, with an index of 85 ! 



Our traditional history tells that we, the Celtic-speaking 

 races of Britain, are not of one common ancestry, but are the 

 descendants of two distinct series of immigrants, a British and a 

 Gaelic. Whatever may have been the origin of the former, we 

 know that the latter are not homogenous, but are the mixed de- 

 scendants of the several Fomorian, Nemedian, Firbolg, Tuatha de 

 Danaan, and Milesian immigrations, with which has been com- 

 bined in later times a strong admixture of Scandinavian blood. 

 It is now scarcely possible to ascertain to which of these compo- 

 nent strains in our ancestry we owe the Celtic tongue which over- 

 mastered and supplanted the languages of the other tribes, but it 

 is strictly in accordance with what we know of the history of 

 mankind, that this change should have taken place. We have 

 instances in modern times of the adoption by conquered tribes of 

 the language of a dominant invading people. For example, Mr- 

 Hale has lately told us that the speech of the Hupas has super- 

 seded the languages of those Californian Indians whom they 

 have subdued. In like manner, nearer home, the English lan- 

 guage is slowly but surely supplanting the Celtic tongues them- 

 selves. 



We may here parenthetically note that what has been observed 

 in the case of language has also taken place in reference to ritual 

 and custom. Observances which have a history and a meaning 

 for one race have, in not a few instances, been adopted by or im- 



