THE HUMAN SPECIES 297 



whose name was held among them in high honour, for 

 we find it repeated in the list of Swedish kings. It is 

 conspicuous in the oldest German Heldenbuch, and the 

 Goths or the Lombards brought it into Italy, where 

 Azzo and Azzolino, mutations of Atzel, the Teutonic 

 form of the name, are prominent, chiefly among the 

 Ghibeline nobles, as is naturally to be expected in 

 civil contests between the northern and Italian races. 



The early alliance of the Finnic stem with the 

 Gothic nations, besides the community of proper names, 

 is still more evident in the mythical list of their pro- 

 genitors, where the denominations of Geat and Finn 

 are recognized by all the nations of the north-west, 

 including the pagan Saxons of the east coast of Eng- 

 land, who, in the poem of Beowulf, denominate them- 

 selves Geats, not Saxons.* On the north of the Bal- 

 tic, reminiscences of the juxtaposition of the dwarf 

 and giant races are abundant. Their contests and 

 intermarriages are recorded in sagas, in several cases 

 recompositions of more ancient documents, though pass- 

 ing at last into mythi, in a land where Laplanders 

 still exist ; and the conquering race in the southern 

 portion is even now a stalwart people. What they 

 were in rude antiquity is often historically marked; 

 and very recently a letter from Professor Nielson an- 

 nounced to the Royal Academy of Stockholm the dis- 

 covery of enormous human bones, accompanied by flint 



* See the important preface to Beowulf, in the excellent 

 the original, by the learned John H. Kemble, 



