UPON THE SERIES OF PREHISTORIC CRANIA. 231 



Morley, 'English Writers/ 1867, vol. i. pt. i. p. 159) referred to as 

 agreeing in asserting that the Irish Gael came from Spain ; and it 

 is even added, as if the process had been actually observed in the 

 Bay of Biscay, that ' by means of their small ships, slowly and in 

 the course of years, the Spanish Gaels colonised Ireland and our 

 western coasts/ It seems obvious enough that what is thus 

 put forward as a consensus of evidence means merely that a number 

 of inferior writers repeated, as is so often the case, with particular 

 emphasis and increase of precision one of the very few rash sug- 

 gestions which a really great writer may have made l . 



The duality of type presented to us by the intermingling of 

 dolichocephali and brachycephali in the interments of the bronze 

 period has been continued down to the present day amongst the in- 

 habitants of Wales and some other Celtic localities in forms which, 

 however real, are yet happily compatible with their occupying the 

 same area both in life and after death. The present Bishop of 

 St. David's, in his book, 'Vestiges of the Gael in Gwynedd,' 1851, 

 pp. 72, 73, whilst, accepting the usual philological and physiological 

 arguments against the singleness of origin for the entire British 

 population of Wales, adds certain evidence, based upon the differing 

 moral phenomena manifested at the present day by the inhabitants 

 of the Principality in the form of mutual repulsion and dislike, 

 which points in the same direction. For this the reader may be 

 referred to his book. A similar history is given by Professor Broca 



1 Prichard, • Phys. Hist.' iii. 108, who speaks of Tacitus as having been ' under the 

 mistake of supposing Spain to be opposite to South Wales,' and of 'undue stress' 

 having been laid by various writers, including Niebuhr, upon • the idea of attributing 

 an Iberian origin to the Silures,' seems to think that it was not his ' deliberate opinion 

 that the Silures came from Spain.' A good deal depends upon the reading of the 

 over-terse phraseology of the historian ; I incHne to think that by the words 4 proximi 

 Gallis et similes sunt ' Tacitus meant to indicate that a third division of the inhabi- 

 tants of Great Britain, in opposition to the Caledonians and the Silures, was constituted 

 by those inhabiting the south-east corner of the island, next to Gaul, of whom Julius 

 Caesar had spoken in a parallel passage, B. G. 5. 14. If this be the true meaning of 

 those five words, the words which Prichard refers to as qualifying the suggestion as 

 to the Silures, « in universum tamen aestimanti Gallos vicinam insulam occupasse credi- 

 ble est,' would not really have any relation to them. Zeuss, ' Die Deutschen,' p. 202, is 

 as distinctly condemnatory of his suggestion as is Prichard : 4 Mit eben so ungenugenden 

 Griinden wie die Vblker von Caledonien von Germanien werden diese Silures von 

 Tacitus von den Iberern abgeleitet.' As regards the Irish tradition of a connexion 

 between Ireland and Spain, Professor Ehys writes to me to the effect that it is not 

 a genuine tradition at all but only an etymological one, all turning on (H)iberus and 

 Hibernus or Gallicia and Gael. 



