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BY JOHK BEDDOE, M.D., F.E.S., M.A.I. 



Mead at the General Meeting ^ Mo/rch 6th, 1873. 



ETHNIC migrations may be divided into two classes : — 

 1st. Those into countries previously unoccupied. 

 2nd. Those into countries already inhabited. 

 Examples of the first kind are far less numerous than those of 

 the second. In the ancient world, as known to the Greeks and 

 Romans, there were really no countries unoccupied, except 

 perhaps some portions of the Sahara, which were unfit for human 

 habitation. The earliest recorded example of such migration 

 is the colonization of Iceland, by certain chiefs of Norway. Their 

 country had been conquered by Harold Harfager, and not 

 choosing to submit to his authority, they determined to leave 

 their native land and settle in Iceland, then only a desert. Some 

 of them even attempted to settle in Greenland, but were in the 

 end unsuccessful, — partly from the nature of the country, and 

 partly on account of the opposition they subsequently met with 

 from the Esquimaux, themselves settlers from some remote 

 region. 



B 



