360 Proceedings of the Royal Society. 
Monday; 4th March 1844. 
Sir T. M. BRISBANE, President, Bart., in the Chair: 
The following Communication was read :— 
On the Human Races in Britain, enumerated by Tacitus, 
By Dr Hibbert Ware. 
This memoir had. been undertaken as preliminary to an ethnolo- 
gical inquiry which the author had proposed to institute into the 
aborigines of the British Islands. It was premised, that in this en- 
deavour to seek for ancient races in those which were modern, great 
caution is required. 
It has been asked, if, at the present day, we can as readily dis- 
tinguish an Iberian type from one that is Gaulish or Caledonian, as 
was done more than seventeen hundred years ago in the time of 
Tacitus? It is answered, that, by a conservative principle in our 
nature, directed to the persistency of types, the influences of Time, 
Climate, and Civilization, are rendered of little avail. And, even in 
a mixture or crossing of races, there is an interposition of preserving 
laws made in favour of mutually approximating types, such as those 
of Europe. For instance, when two or more races are mingled to- 
gether in different proportions, it is expected that the type of the 
minority will eventually become merged in that of the majority. 
But whether, in accelerating or postponing such a result, it will be 
found that, among all animals, nature exercises a sort of discretion- 
ary power under three varied circumstances: 1st, When races. 
widely differ from each other ; 2d, When races are in a less degree 
remote; and, 3d, When races, like those of Britain, or Europe in 
general, approximate closely to each other. . These three circum- 
stances the author discussed in succession. 
1st, When races widely differ from each other, as in the crossing 
of the horse and the ass. In this case, nature has ever declared, 
that a debased or intermediate breed shall not be perpetuated. 
2d, When races are in a less degree remote. In this example 
nature acts with uniformity, as in the crossing of the spaniel with 
the greyhound, &c. ; and, among the human species, in the mixture 
of European and black races. In any one of these instances, there 
is no Incapacity in the progeny to perpetuate its breed; but it will 
be found that the principle directed to the persistence of races gra- 
dually restores, in the course of a few generations, the purity of any 
one of the types which may have been contaminated by mixture, 
while the other type, in the mean time, is doomed to extinction. 
3d, When races approximate closely to each other, as when 
spaniels (of which there are divers breeds) are crossed among 
themselves, and the same of white and grey mice, the result shews 
that, in the progeny, the types of a paternal or maternal stock are 
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