THEIR HEIGHT, FORM, AND STRENGTH. 137 



among the rocks near Lough Corrib, we cannot 

 help asking ourselves, how the light-haired, blue- 

 eyed inhabitants, especially on Sunday and holiday, 

 when cleaned for Mass, present such an amount of 

 health and happiness, or why they remain in that 

 region." 



145. M. Henri Martin, a Frenchman, said before 

 the British Association in 1878 : " I have visited a 

 part of the Counties of Galway and Mayo. I fancied 

 I should find the majority of the people to be descen- 

 dants of the Firbolgs ; I have seen on the contrary 

 that the fair-haired, blue-eyed race* predominates, 

 and is much the more numerous." 



H6. In 1882, Dr. Beddoe, of the London Anthro- 

 pometric Committee, wrote : " Let us see what can" 

 be made of the popular solution of the matter the 

 theory that the Connaughters had degenerated under 

 the influence of semi-starvation, until their kinsmen 

 across the Shannon would no longer acknowledge 

 the connection. This view was brought forward 

 years ago by a writer in the Dublin University 

 Magazine, and so forcible and graphic was the 

 picture he drew of the dwarfish, pot-bellied, 

 abortively-featured, prognathous ' 'spectres of a 

 people, once able-bodied and comely, that haunted 

 Sligo and Mayo,' that it has been quoted by every 

 monogenist writer at home and abroad ever since. 



