V BRITISH ETHNOLOGY 257 



What the natives of Ireland were like at the 

 time of the Roman conquest of Britain, and for 

 centuries afterwards, we have no certain know- 

 ledge : but the earliest trustworthy records prove 

 the existence, side by side with one another, of a 

 fair and a dark stock, in Ireland as in Britain. 

 The long form of skull is predominant among the 

 ancient, as among modern, Irish. 



II. The people termed Gauls, and those called 

 Germans, "by ike, Romans, did not differ in any 

 important physical character. 



The terms in which the ancient writers describe 

 both Gauls and Germans are identical. They are 

 always tall people, with massive limbs, fair skins, 

 fierce blue eyes, and hair the colour of which 

 ranges from red to yellow. Zeuss, the great 

 authority on these matters, affirms broadly that no 

 distinction in bodily feature is to be found between 

 the Gauls, the Germans, and the Wends, so far as 

 their characters are recorded by the old historians ; 

 and he proves his case by citations from a cloud of 

 witnesses. 



An attempt has been made to show that the 

 colour of the hair of the Gauls must have differed 

 very much from that which obtained among the 

 Germans, on the strength of the story told by 

 Suetonius (Caligula, 4), that Caligula tried to pass 

 off Gauls for Germans by picking out the tallest, 

 and making then " rutilare et summittere 

 comam." 



181 



