146 



POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



We are still further assured of the truth of these geographical 

 generalizations on comparison of the racial history of England with 

 that of Ireland; for we thereby have opportunity to observe the 

 effects of different degrees of such insularity. In the latter case, it 



An Irish Type. Gray eyes, brown hair. Arran Islands, Gal way. 



has become a bit too pronounced to be a favorable element in the 

 situation. Disregarding her modern political history for we are 

 dealing with races and not nations it is indeed true, as Dr. Beddoe 

 says, that Ireland " has always been a little behindhand." Ethnic 

 invasions, if they took place at all, came late and with spent energy ; 

 most of them, as we shall see, whether of culture or of physical types, 

 failed to reach her shores at all. These laws apply to all forms of life 

 alike. Thus the same geographical isolation which excluded the 



only been opened to us, a large part of it has even been subjected to the perils of trans- 

 portation to America for our benefit. From these two sources all of our portraits are 

 derived. 



Authorities comprehensively treating the anthropology of the British Isles are very few. 

 Pre-eminent is Dr. John Beddoe's Races of Britain, Bristol and London, 1885 ; and his 

 Stature and Bulk of Man in the British Isles, in Memoirs of the Anthropological Society of 

 London, iii, 1870. A full list of a score or more of his scattered papers will be found in 

 our Bibliography of the Anthropology of Europe, now in preparation, to appear in Bulletins 

 of the Boston Public Library. The monumental work of Davis and Thurnam, Crania Bri- 

 tannica, two volumes, London, 1865, covers the whole subject of past and present popula- 

 tions. An essay, On Some Fixed Points in British Ethnology, by the late T. H. Huxley, in 

 the Contemporary Review for 1871, is a convenient summary, with no attention to the evi- 

 dence of craniology, however. Finally, the reports of the Anthropometric Committee of the 

 British Association for Advancement of Science, especially its last one in 1883, should not 

 be omitted. Many other papers of local importance are named in our Bibliography above 

 mentioned. 



