290 THE REV. J. MAGENS MELLO, M.A., P.G.S., ETC., ON 



careful to point out that by this term Aryan is only meant 

 the speakers of the parent speech, whilst the race itself may 

 have been of a mixed character. 



In conclnsion I may notice a curious fact which tends to 

 show that the darker races did, as a fact, precede the lighter 

 in Europe, and that is the well-proved tendency of the 

 blond type to die out. When two different races encounter 

 one another and intermarry, one might be inclined to 

 suppose that an intermediate type would be the result ; but 

 this is the case to a limited extent only, the real tendency is 

 to perpetuate the stronger type of the two, and the final 

 result is Atavism, or reversion to the older stock, which, 

 through its long occupation of the soil, has become the 

 stronger as a general rule. Now it has been observed that 

 the fair races of Western and Southern Europe are slowly 

 disappearing, Avhilst the dark stock is reasserting itself; 

 so that the old Neolithic type, swarthy in complexion and 

 short in stature, will, at some future no very distant date, 

 have overcome the last vestiges of that blond type now 

 present, although present in a minority, over a large part of 

 Europe. This seems to show very clearly that the blond 

 race was the later to make its appearance here, and their 

 original home is not therefore to be looked for in Europe, at 

 least in Western Europe. Whether the Aryan cradle was, 

 as some now think, to be sought in North Eastern Europe 

 is still an unsettled question; whilst a considerable number 

 of facts may be adduced in favour of this view, there are 

 various points Avhich seem to oppose it, and there is a good 

 deal yet to be said in maintenance of the older opinion that 

 the blond Aryans, in common with the other races of mankind, 

 had their original seat in Asia, and it seems to me this view 

 would not be inconsistent with the idea that when the 

 first separation of the human family into its different stocks 

 took place, one portion may have entered North Eastern 

 Europe where it would acquire its fixed characteristics and 

 develop its own forms of speech, whilst at the same time it 

 might, through long absence, forget various things once 

 familiar in the Eastern home, such as certain animals and 

 other objects, which would account for certain philological 

 difficulties. 



That metallurgy did not originate in Europe as an original 

 invention of the indigenous Aryan peoples as they slowly 

 emerged from, the Neolithic conditions of hfe appears to be 

 certain. The originators, or, I should rather say, the intro- 



