228 Darwinism and Other Essays. 



very different races. The first or Iberian race 

 may be regarded as aboriginal in Europe, in the 

 sense that we cannot tell how it got there. It 

 was a black-haired and dark-skinned race, if we 

 may judge from the remnant of it which still 

 preserves its primitive language in the isolated 

 corner of Spain between the Pyrenees and the 

 Bay of Biscay. The second or Aryan race seems 

 to have been fair-haired and blue-eyed, and it 

 overran Europe in successive swarms, coming 

 from the highlands of central Asia, where di- 

 vers tribes of Tatars have since taken its place. 

 The Aryans crowded the Iberians westward, and 

 everywhere overcame them (save in the corner 

 of Spain just mentioned), and intermingled with 

 them, forcing upon them their own speech and 

 customs. Thus the language of Europe to-day is 

 Aryan, and its legal and social structure is Ar- 

 yan, but its population is a mixture of Aryan 

 and Iberian. In the extremities of Europe as 

 looked at from Asia in the three southern 

 peninsulas, in Gaul, and in western and north- 

 ern Britain the dark aboriginal type predomi- 

 nates ; while in Scandinavia, northern Germany, 

 and northern Russia the blonde type of the in- 

 vaders remains in the ascendant. It is owing to 

 this mixture of strongly contrasted races that the 



