352 



KNOWLEDGE 



[Fku. 24, 1882. 



branch of tho Banio isolated Basque or EuRtrarian race 

 wliich now lives oniony tlif valli-ys of tho WesU-ni 

 Pyrcni'i's and tin- Astiirias mountains. 'I'licy .si-oin to havr 

 crossotl over into liritniii whili- it wiis still (•orincct<'cl witli 

 tlio Coiitiiirnt liy a liroad istlimu.s, or, perhaps, even l>y n 

 lonj; strclvh of land occupyinf; the entire lieds of the 

 Channel and the Oernian Ocean. Our knowledge of them 

 is mainly derived from their tonilis or harrows — jjreat 

 heaps of earth which they ]iiled up almve the liodies of 

 their dead chieftains. Krom these have lieen taken their 

 skeletons, their wi-apons, their domestic utensils, and their 

 ornaments, all the latter objects huvinj; heen buried with 

 tlie corpse, for the use of the gho.st in the other world. 

 From an examination of these remains, we are able largely 

 to recon.struct tho life of the Eustrarian peojih — the 

 earliest inhabitants of LJritiin whose blood is still largely 

 represented in the existing ]iopulation. 



In stature, the neolithic men were short and thick-set, 

 not often exceeding five feet four inches. In com- 

 plexion, they were probably white, but swarthy, like the 

 darkest Italians and Spaniards, or even the Moors. Their 

 skulls were very long and narrow ; and they form the best 

 distinguishing mark of the race, as well as the best test of 

 its survival at the present day. Tho neoliths were un- 

 aci|uainted with tho use of metal, but they employed 

 weapons and implements of stone, not rudely chipped, like 

 those of the older stone age, but carefully ground and 

 polished. They made pottery, too, and wove cloth ; they 

 domesticated pigs and cattle ; and they cultivated coarse 

 cereals in the little plots which they cleared out of the 

 forest with their stone hatchets or tomahawks. In general 

 culture, they were about at the same level as the more 

 advanced Polynesian tribes, when they first came into 

 contact with European civilisation. The \)arrows which 

 they raised over their dead chieftains were long and rather 

 narrow, not round, like those of the later Celtic conquerors. 

 They appear to have lived for the most part in little 

 stockaded villages, each occupying a small clearing in the 

 river valleys, and ruled over by a single chief : and the 

 barrows usually cap the summit of the boundary hills which 

 overlook the little dales. Inside them are long-chambered 

 galleries of large, rough-hewn stones ; and when these 

 primitive erections are laid bare by the decay or removal 

 of the barrow, they form the so-called " Druidical monu- 

 ments " of old-fashioiu'd antitiuaries, a few of which are 

 Celtic, but the greater part Eustrarian. 



At some future period I hope to lay before the readers 

 of Knowledcie a fuller account of these neolithic people 

 and their existing remains. At i)rcsoiit, the points to 

 which I wish to call attention arc, firstly, the fact of their 

 existence in early days in Britain ; and, secondly, tho fact 

 that many of their descendants still remain among us to 

 the present day. Nor do I propose in this paper to esti- 

 mate the numerical strength of the Eustrarian element in 

 the population of the British islands as it now stands. It 

 will be best to consider that part of the question at 

 a later point in this series, when we have seen what 

 were the subsequent races which overcame, and, in fact, 

 displaced, the aboriginal Eustrarian folk. For the 

 moment, it will suffice to point out that before the 

 arrival of the Celts and other Aryan tribes in 

 Britain, the^e Eustrarians spread over the whole of our 

 islands, and were apparently the only people then inhaliit- 

 ing them. At least, the ninuuments of this date — perhaps 

 from ."i,000 to '.'0,000 years old —seem to be similar in 

 type wherever they occur in Britain, and to contain tho 

 remains of an essentially identical race. I shall also add 

 liere, by antici]iation, what I hope to show more in detail 

 hereafter, that their descendants exist almost unmixed at 



the present day as the so-called Black Celts in certain 

 part-s of WeBt«Tn Ireland and Scotland, and in a few placeit 

 in South Wales ; whihf thi'ir blood may be still traced in 

 a more mixed condition in Yorkshire, Lincolnshire, East 

 .\nglia, the Scotch Highlands, and many other districts 

 of England and Scotland. How they have managed to 

 survive and to outlivi' the various later Celtic and Teutonic 

 c()n<|uest.s, we shall have to in<iuire when we come to con- 

 sidia- the origin and progress of those 6ub.se(|uent waves of 

 population. 



BIRTH OF THE MOON 



By Tidal Evolltion. 



Bv Dii. Ball, Astronomer-Rotal for Ireland. 



PABT II. 



Ly P to the present point, dynamics have guided us with 

 J unfailing accuracy, Itut if we attempt to look back 

 still earlier, we have not the sure light of dynamics for our 

 guide. Yet it is impossible to resist a speculation as to 

 how the moon and the earth came into this wondrous 

 relation. Mr. Darwin has made the suggestion that most 

 probably the moon was actually fractured ofT from the 

 earth. This is indeed a romantic origin for the moon, but 

 listen to the grounds by which it may be substantiated. In 

 those (larly days, before we believed the moon existed, tl*B 

 sun raised tides on tlie earth as he does at present It 

 was, no doubt, the case that the earth had then no oceans 

 of water on its surface. The tides were manifested by 

 actual throbs in the sjft or molten materials of the earth 

 itself. Twice a day the earth rose and fell under the 

 pulses of the solar tides, but as the day was then only three 

 hours, the interval between one high tide and the next was 

 but an hour and a half. The earth was thus in a state of 

 vibration in consequence of the solar tides. These solar 

 tides were, no doubt, small, as the solar tides are small at 

 tho present day. But at that very remote epoch it seems 

 not uidikely that there was a particular circumstance which 

 was calculated to exaggerate erroneously the influence of 

 the solar tide. The point now referred to is not an easy 

 one to explain ; let me try to simplify it by an illustration. 

 A heavy weight is hanging by a string — say, for exfimple, a 

 weight of 14 lb. is suspended by a string a yard long, with 

 a light wooden mallet weighing an ounce or less ; you give 

 the weight a series of blows — generally speaking you will 

 not succeed in giving to the weight any large degree of 

 swing, but if yo\i carefully time the blows so that they 

 shall harmonize with the natural swing of the weight, yon 

 will find it quite easy in a short time to give to the large 

 weight as great a swing as you may desire. Y'^our success 

 has depended upon the fact that the impulses were timed 

 to harmonize with the natural \ibrations of the weight 

 In a similar manner, the semi-molten mass of the earth had 

 a period of vibration. Impulses small in themselves which 

 did not harmonize with that period could produce but a 

 trifling effect. It has, however, been shown that the 

 natural period of the vibrations of the molten earth must 

 proliably have been about an hour and a half. This, it wiD 

 1)(^ remembered, is also the period of the solar tides. Here, 

 then, we see how the solar tides in that early epoch may 

 have risen to transcendent importance. It is also veiy 

 significant that a period of rotation equal to three hours is 

 veiy close to the most rapid rotation which the earth could 

 have possessed without actually falling in pieces. Hei«, 

 then, wo have all tho elements necessary for a rupture. 

 The earth is on tho point of breaking by its rotation, then 

 the solar tides come into action, each tide augments the 

 effect of the previous tides, until at length tho earth, dis- 



