650 



KNO\A^LEDGE 



[Ai-aiL lis, 1882. 



creature provided with gills, hermaphrodite, and with 

 hraiii, honrt, and other organs imperfectly developed. The 

 treatise in wiiich this view is presented falls in no respect 

 beliind Mr. Darwin's other great work in closeness of 

 reasoning and gi-asp of facts. The portion of the work 

 . — more than one-half — Ijearing on sexual selection, if 

 somewhat less satisfactory and conclusive, forms jet a 

 most important contribution to the wide subject of the 

 genesis of species. The closing words of this treatise may 

 fitly here be quoted. After speaking of the distaste with 

 which many persons would probably regard his conclusions 

 as to the descent of man, and then touching on the hopes 

 which the advance of the human race in past ages seems 

 fairly to justify, he says we are not, however, concerned 

 " with hopes or fears, but only with the truth as far as 

 our reason allows us to discover it. I have given the 

 evidence to the best of my ability, and we must acknow- 

 ledge, as it seems to me, that man with all his noble quali- 

 ties, with sympathy which feels for the most debased, with 

 benevolence which extends not only to other men, but to 

 the humblest living creature, with his godlike intellect 

 which has penetrated into the movements and constitution 

 of the solar system — with all these exalted powers — man 

 still bears ki his bodily frame the indelible stamp of his 

 lowly origin." 



After the publication of his first great work, Darwin 

 continued to gather evidence tending to strengthen his 

 theory. In 1862 he published his remarkable work on the 

 "Fertilization of Orchids;" and in 1867 his "Domesti- 

 cated Animals and Cultivated Plants, or the Principles of 

 Variation, Inheritance, Reversion, Crossing, Interbreed- 

 ing, and Selection under Domestication." In 1872 Mr. 

 Darwin published " The Expression of the Emotions in 

 Man and Animals ; " in 1875, " Insectivorous Plants ; " in 

 1876, " Cross and Self- Fertilization in the Vegetable King- 

 dom ; " and in 1877, "Different Forms of Flowers in 

 Plants of the same Species." Only last year appeared his 

 work upon earthworms, in which he traced the operations 

 of worms in gradually covering the surface ofthe globe 

 with a layer of mould. 



OUR ANCESTORS. 



III.— THE TEUTONS. 

 By Grant Allen. 



IT does not seem likely that the Roman occupation left 

 much permanent mark upon the ethnology of Britain. 

 So far as we can judge, the Romans held the soil very 

 much as we ourselves hold India — by a purely military 

 tenure. A little sprinkling of Italian blood may perhaps 

 have been indirectly introduced by the legionaries, though 

 comparatively few even of these were really Roman. Most 

 of them were Gauls, Spaniards, Germans, and Low Dutch 

 peoples ; and their influence could only have been felt, 

 othnograplucally speaking, in the immediate neighbourhood 

 of the military stations, where a few half-breeds may have 

 mingled scantily here and there with the native population. 

 A more important result of the conquest, however, would 

 doubtless be found in the general amalgamation of the 

 older Celtic and Euskarian elements under stress of 

 the new overlords. There is reason to believe that 

 tlie greater number of Britons sank int» the posi- 

 tion of serfs, either employed on the great corn farms 

 into which the land was parcelled out, or in the 

 mines of Cornwall, Sussex, and the Forest of Dean. 

 This grinding and levelling system of slavery must have 

 pressed pretty equally upon Celts and Euskarians, light- 



haired BelgK and dark Silurians, the former conquerors 

 and tlie former slaves. Confused togetVier in such a 

 common serfdom, the two types seem to have coalesced, 

 so that the lighter and numerically weaker Aryan Celts 

 became practically almost merged into the darker and 

 more numerous Euskarians. At least we know that 

 ever since the Roman days, and down to modem times, 

 the so-called Celts of Wales, Cornwall, and the High- 

 lands are, for the most part, dark-haired and dark-skinned 

 people of a more or less distinctly Euskarian physique, 

 intermixed with comparatively few individuals of the true 

 light Aryan type ; and, as the races were distinct in the 

 days of C;csar and Tacitus, the coalescence probably took 

 place during the period of the Roman occupation. 



After the Romans were gone, however, a second flood of 

 Aryan immigration began to spread o\er the land. The 

 new comers were the English and Saxons, two Teutonic 

 tribes of Low Dutch pirates, who then inhabited Sleswick 

 and the coasts of Hanover and Friesland. There is no 

 doubt that the original English were a light-haired, light- 

 skinned, blue-eyed people of the ordinary Aryan sort. 

 They came over in small clans or families, and settled first 

 on the east and south coasts, from the Firth of Forth to 

 Southampton Water, making their way, in most cases, into 

 the interior, as was natural for pirates, by means of the 

 inlets or estuaries. Whether the Teutons utterly exter- 

 minated the native Britons or not is a question that has 

 been much debated from the historical point of view ; and 

 the weight of mere historical authority is certainly on th' 

 side of extirpation. Mr. Freeman and Canon Stubbs ari 

 both in favour of the belief that the early English conqueror^ 

 kOled off all the Britons — that is to say, in terms of our pre 

 sent discussion, the mixed Celtic and Euskarian inhabitant.- 

 of the Romanised province — while Mr. J. R. Green, the 

 very latest writer on the subject, is of opinion that the 

 Britons were simply driven off in the struggle, but not to 

 any appreciable extent absorbed or enslaved by the con- 

 querors. From the anthropological point of view, how- 

 ever, such a belief is absolutely untenable. The existing 

 English people is certainly not a pure Teutonic race, nor 

 anything like one. It is a mixture, partially Teutonic, 

 partially Celt-Euskarian ; and to this fixed ethnological 

 fact the history must somehow or other be accommodated. 

 Every competent anthropologist, from the days of Phillips 

 and Thurnam to the days of Professors Huxley and 

 Rolleston, has consistently maintained that thesis. It is 

 impossible to twist the e\"idence of plain modern facts to 

 suit the supposed history, but it is very easy to reconstruct 

 the history so as to accord with the existing facts. 



The earliest English settlements were undoubtedly made 

 along the coasts of Kent, Sussex, East Anglia, and York- 

 shire. In Sussex, it seems as though the Saxon invaders 

 did really drive away almost all the " Welsh " into the 

 forest of the Weald, where their descendants may still, 

 perhaps, be foimd ; but elsewhere the Britons appear to 

 have been partially subdued and enslaved. In Kent, 

 where a body of Jutes landed, the dark type is still quite 

 common ; while, in old interments of the heathen age, Jute 

 and Briton are still recognised side by side, the anatomical 

 peculiarities of their skulls being distinctly recognisable 

 to a technical eye. In the plain of Yorkshire, Professor 

 Phillips long ago pointed out that two very different types 

 of physique still prevail, the one tall and light, of English 

 or Danish origin ; the other short, squat, dark, and black 

 eyed, of British or Euskarian origin. Similar dark people 

 are also common among the supposed pure English of 

 Lincolnshire and East Anglia ; while they are not in- 

 frequent in the oldest settled parts of Wessex, about 

 Hampshire, Wiltshire, and the Isle of Wight. In fact, 



