2i8 NATURE STUDIES. 



the subsequent races which overcame, and in part 

 displaced, the aboriginal Euskarian folk. For the 

 moment, it will suffice to point out that before the 

 arrival of the Celts and other Aryan tribes in Britain, 

 these Euskarians spread over the whole of our islands, 

 and were apparently the only people then inhabiting 

 them. At least, the monuments of this date perhaps 

 from 5,000 to 20,000 years old seem to be similar in 

 type wherever they occur in Britain, and to contain 

 the remains of an essentially identical race. I shall also 

 add here, by anticipation, 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 parts of Western Ireland and Scot- 

 land, and in a few places in South Wales ; while their 

 blood may still be traced in a more mixed condition 

 in Yorkshire, Lincolnshire, East Anglia, the Scotch 

 Highlands, and many other districts of England and 

 Scotland. How they have managed to survive and to 

 outlive the various later Celtic and Teutonic conquests, 

 we shall have 'to inquire when we come to consider 

 the origin and progress of those subsequent waves of 

 population. 



II. THE CELTS. 



WHILE the dark - haired and dark - skinned little 

 Euskarians were living unmolested- in the western 

 coasts and islands of Europe hewing patches out of 

 the forest with their stone hatchets, building great 

 barrows over their dead chieftains, and fighting among 



