OF THE HUMAN SPECIES. 465 



Silurum colorati vultus, et torti plerumque crines, et posita 

 contra Hispania, Iberos veteres trajecisse casque sedes occu- 

 p^sse fidem faciunt : proximi Gallis, et similes sunt : seu 

 durante origines vi, seu procurrentibus in diversa terris, po- 

 sitio caeli corporibus habitum dedit */' Under the names of 

 Saxons, Angles, Danes, and Normans, numerous supplies 

 of Germans successively arrived in England, and gradually 

 drove the original Celtic population into the most distant 

 and inaccessible parts of the island. An exposure to the 

 same climate for so many centuries has not approximated the 

 physical characters of the more recent German to those of 

 the older Celtic inhabitants in the smallest degree ; and 

 both descriptions are equally unchanged after a progress 

 from barbarism to the highest civilization. A similar per- 

 manence of the original distinctive characters is observable 

 in France. " Among us,'* says Volney, " a lapse of nine 

 hundred years has not effaced the discriminating marks 

 vi^hich distinguished the inhabitants of Gaul from the north- 

 ern invaders, who, under Charles the Gross, settled 

 themselves in our richest provinces. Travellers, who go 

 from Normandy to Denmark, observe with astonishment the 

 striking resemblance of the inhabitants of these two 

 countries f.''' 



The Vandals J passed from Spain into Africa about the 

 middle of the fifth century : their descendants may be still 

 traced, according to Shaw || and Bruce §, in the mountains 

 of Aurez, by their white and ruddy complexion and yellow 

 hair. " Here I met," says the latter writer, " to my great 

 astonishment, a tribe, who, if I cannot say they were fair 

 like the English, were of a shade lighter than that of the in- 

 habitants of any country to the southward of Britain. Their 

 hair also was red, and their eyes blue.*' — " I imagine them to 

 be a remnant of the Vandals. Procopius mentions a de- 



* Agricola^ 11. 



+ Travels in Syria and Egypt., v. i. ch. 6. 

 + Gibbon ; Decline and Fall, ch. 33. 

 II Travels, ch. 3. 



^ Travels to discover, &c. Svo. ed* Introduction, p. 35. 

 H H 



