IN NOETH AMERICA. 2S 



to the Loire ; a great portion of Spain, to which they gave their uame, the north-west 

 coast of Italy, to the Aruo, and the three largest islands in the Mediterranean. ' " 



M. Moreau-Christophe assigns to the Iberians a range almost equal to that given 

 in M. Demogeot's estimate. " The Iberian type " he says, " has been strongly imprinted 

 on the populations of southern Gaul and to this day the people of Languedoc resemble 

 the French much less than they resemble the Catalans.^ " 



Prof. G. Gerland, in his article on the Basques and the Iberians in Groeber's eucyclo- 

 psedic work on Romance philology takes practically the same view, regarding the 

 Basques as the comparatively pure remnant of the ancient inhabitants of the Iberian 

 peninsula, many of whose characteristics, he believes, have been inherited by the modern 

 Spaniards. The popular customs of the Basques are those of the Iberians, as described by 

 the classical writers of Greece and Rome. Topographical names prove that they occupied 

 not only Spain, but south-western France, and the dialect of the Gascons bears traces of 

 the influence of their language, especially in ignoring the sounds of /and v. In fine. 

 Prof Gerland looks upon the Gascons as simply Romanized Basques.' 



A still greater extension is given to the Iberians by such ethnologists as Prof. Rhys, 

 Dr. Beddoe, and the Rev. Isaac Taylor. This last author writes as follows of the traces of 

 the Iberian stock in the British Islands : " The ethnologist readily identifies the short- 

 statured, dark-eyed Silurian race, which is so prevalent in South "Wales and the west of 

 Ireland, with the Gascon or Basque type of the Pyrenean region. It is doubtful whether 

 these Ligurians, Iberians, or Euskarians, as they are called, crossed into Spain by the 

 Straits of Gibraltar, or whether they crept along the coast of the Mediterranean from 

 Liguria and penetrated by the north-eastern defiles of the Pyrenees. The absence of 

 Iberic names from Eastern Europe and Asia seems to make it probable that the Iberians 

 crossed from Africa, and spread over Spain, and thence to France, the Italian coastland 

 and the Mediterranean Islands. ... In Aquitania proper there is hardly a single Celtic 

 uame — all are either Iberic or Romance. In Italy Iberic names are not uncommon, and it 

 has been thought that some faint traces of a Turanian, if not an Iberic pojjulatiou, are 

 perceptible in the names of Egypt, north-western Africa and Sicily." ^ 



The testimony thus supplied by the names of places has been confirmed by the phys- 

 ical characteristics of a large portion of the population of Western Europe. " Until of 

 late years ", writes Dr. Beddoe, " almost all we had to show for our belief in the existence 

 of an Iberian substratum in our population were the conjecture of Tacitus respecting the 

 Silures ; the length of head in the long-barrow people and some other neolithic men ; 

 the resemblance between the Welsh cave-men and Busk's Gibraltar skulls and the sup- 

 posed greater frequency of dark hair, especially in the West, than could otherwise be 

 well accoiinted for. I hope to be able, in a later portion of this book, considerably to 

 define and strengthen the evidence of physical characteristics." '' The evidence in 

 question given in tables and charts, the result of actual i)ersonal examination, is most 

 important, and extremely interesting. Dr. Beddoe found dark eyes and hair, the latter 

 often curly, very frequent within the limits of Siluria. He also found dark complexions 



' Hist, de la Litt. Franc., p. 11. ^ Les Gaulois : Nos Aïeux, p. 30. 



^ Grundriss der Romanischen Philologie, vol. i. * Words and Places, pp. 158-160. 



^ The Baces of Britain : a Contribution to the Ethnology of Western Europe pp. 25, 26. 



Sec. II, 1888. 4. 



