256 LIGHT SCIENCE FOR LEISURE HOURS. 



assuredly to be Saxon, though some Welsh writers 

 have laboured hard to prove that the English language 

 contains a large mixture of Welsh words. The test 

 of language is not infallible, however. Indeed, if we 

 may judge from what some writers alleged in the 

 thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, we owe it mainly 

 to accident that we do not now speak a language more 

 French than English. But the evidence derived from 

 bodily and mental characteristics is infallible when it 

 speaks plainly. And assuredly it speaks plainly in this 

 case. In England we occasionally meet with persons 

 of the yellow-haired, fair-complexioned, blue-eyed 

 Saxon type, and perhaps as often with persons of the 

 lighter complexioned Scandinavian type. But the 

 people, as a whole, is a dark-haired and dark-eyed 

 people. Even in the North-east, where the Scandinavian 

 type is often met with, and in the East and South-east, 

 where the Anglo-Saxon type is commonest, either type 

 is seldom seen compared with the dark British type. 

 In Cumberland, Wales, and Cornwall we find, of course, 

 purer British races, not the same race, which of itself 

 affords a proof that the old British inhabitants were 

 not driven into these parts of the island. But let any- 

 one walk or ride through London, examining West-end 

 and City regions, poor neighbourhoods and rich, and 

 compare the number of dark and fair-complexioned 

 persons he sees. He will perceive how decisive is the 

 evidence of the parentage of our people, let their in- 

 stitutions be what they may, or their language as 

 Saxon as even Freeman or Stubbs could desire to prove 



