458 
Nevertheless we must bear in mind the threefold division of 
the shire—not that into ridings, but that pointed out by nature. 
We have, first, the western third, the region of carboniferous 
limestone and millstone-grit, of narrow valleys and cold rainy 
moorlands; secondly, the great plain of York, the region, 
roughly speaking, of the Trias, monotonously fertile, and 
having no natural defence except its numerous rivers, which 
indeed have sometimes served ratheras a gateway to the invader 
than as a bulwark against him ; to this plain Holderness and 
the Vale of Pickering may be regarded as eastern adjuncts. 
Thirdly, we have the elevated region of the east, in the two very 
dissimilar divisions of the moorlands and the wolds ; these are 
the most important parts of Yorkshire to the prehistoric 
archeologist ; but to the modern ethnologist they are com- 
paratively of little interest. 
The relics of the palzeolithic period, so abundant in the south 
of England, are, I believe, almost wholly wanting in Yorkshire, 
where archzology begins with the neolithic age, and owes its 
foundations to Canon Greenwell of Durham, Mr. Mortimer of 
Driffield, Mr. Atkinson of Danby, and their predecessors in the 
exploration of the barrows of Cleveland and the Wolds, whose 
results figure largely in the ‘‘Crania Britannica” of Davis and 
Thunam,—themselyes, by the way, both natives of the city of 
York. . 
The earliest inhabitants we can distinctly recognise were the 
builders of certain long barrows, such as that of Scamridge in 
Cleveland, There is still, I believe, some difference of opinion 
among the anthropologists of East Yorkshire (where, by the 
way, in the town of Hull, the science flourishes under the 
auspices of a local Anthropological Society)—still, I say, some 
difference of opinion as to whether the long-barrow folk were 
racially diverse from those who succeeded them and who buried 
their dead in round barrows, But Canon Greenwell at least ad- 
heres to Thurnam’s doctrine, and holds that Yorkshire, or part 
of it, was occupied at the period in question, perhaps 3,000 
years ago, by a people of moderate or rather short stature, with 
remarkably long and narrow heads, who were ignorant of metal- 
lurgy, who buried their dead under long ovoid barrows, with san- 
guinaryrites, and who labour under strongly-founded suspicions of 
canniballism. : 
Of the subsequent period, generally known as the bronze age, 
the remains in Yorkshire, as elsewhere, are vastly more plentiful. 
The Wolds especially, and the Cleveland hills, abound with 
round barrows, in which either burnt or unburnt bodies have 
been interred, accompanied sometimes with weapons or orna- 
ments of bronze, and stiil more often with flint arrowheads. 
Where bones are found, the skull presents what Barnard Davis 
considers the typical British form ; z.e. it is generally rather short 
and broad, of considerable capacity and development, with fea- 
tures harsh and bony. The bodily frame is usually tall and | 
stalwart, the stature often exceeding 6 ft., as in the well-known 
instance of the noble savage of Gristhorpe, whose skeleton is 
preserved in the Scarborough Museum. 
Though certain facts, such as the known use of iron in Britain 
before Czsar’s time, and its extreme rarity in these barrows, and 
some little difference in proportion between the skulls just de- 
scribed and the type most common among our modern British 
Kelts} do certainly leave room for doubt, I have little hesitation 
in referring these round barrows to the Brigantes and Parisii,* 
the known occupants of Yorkshire before the Roman conquest. 
Both what I will term provisionally the pure long-barrow and 
the pure round-barrow types of cranium are represented among 
our modern countrymen. But the former is extremely rare, 
while the latter is not uncommon. It is probable enough that 
the older type may, in amalgamating with the newer and more 
powerful one, have bequeathed to the Kelts of our own time the 
rather elongated form which prevails among them. Whether 
this same older type was really Iberian is a point of great inte- 
rest, not yet ripe for determination. 
Another moot point is the extent to which the population of 
modern England is derived from the colonists introduced under 
the Roman occupation. It is my ownimpression that the extent, 
or rather the intensity of such colonisation has been over-esti- 
mated by my friend Mr. Thomas Wright and his disciples. I 
take it that, in this respect, the Roman occupation of Britain 
was somewhere between our own occupations of India and of 
South Africa, or perhaps still more nearly like that of Algeria 
* It has been conjectured that the Parisii were Frisians; but I think it 
yery unlikely, 
NATURE 
[Sepz. 25, 1873 
by the French, who have their roads, villas, and military estab- 
lishments, and even considerable communities in some of the 
towns, but who constitute but a very small percentage of the 
population, and whose traces would almost disappear in a few 
generations, could the communication with the mother-country 
be cut off. 
If, however, any traces of the blood of the lordly Romans 
themselves, or of that more numerous and heterogeneous mass 
of people whom they introduced as legionaries, auxillaries, or 
colonists, are yet recognisableanywhere in this county, it may pro- © 
bably be in the city of York, or in the neighbourhood of Catterick, 
The size and splendour of ancient Eburacum, its occupation at — 
various times as a sort of military capital by the Emperor Severus 
and others, its continued existence through the Anglian and 
Anglo-Danish periods, and its subsequent comparative freedom 
from such great calamities * or vicissitudes as are apt to cause 
great and sudden changes of population, might almost induce us 
to expect to find such vestiges. If Greek and Gothic blood still 
assert themselves in the features and figures of the people of 
Arles, if Spanish characteristics are still recognisable in Bruges, 
why not Italian ones in York? It may be so; but I must con- 
fess that I have not seen them, or have failed to recognise them. 
Catterick, the site of ancient Cataractonium, I have not visited. 
Of the Anglian conquest of Yorkshire we know very little, 
except that it was accomplished gradually by successive efforts, 
that the little district of Elmet, in the neighbourhood of Leeds, 
continued British for a while, and that Carnoban, which is almost 
certainly Craven, is spoken of by a Welsh writer as British after 
all the rest of the country had ceased to be so—a statement pro- 
bable enough in itself, and apparently corroborated by the sur- 
vival of a larger number of Keltic words in the dialect of Craven 
than in the speech of other parts of Yorkshire. 
Certain regulations and expressions in the Northumbrian 
laws, among others the less value of a churl’s life as compared 
with that of a thane, have been thought to indicate that the 
proportion of the British population that remained attached to 
the soil, under Anglian lords, was larger in the north than in 
some other parts of England. The premisses are, however, 
insufficient to support the conclusion ; and, on the other hand, — 
we are told positively by Bede that Ethelfrith Fleisawr drove out 
the British inhabitants of extensive districts. The singular 
discoveries of Boyd Dawkins and his coadjutors in the Seitle 
Cave, where elaborate ornaments and enamels of Romano- 
British type are found in conjunction with indications of a 
squalid and miserable mode of life long endured, attest clearly 
the calamities of the natives about that period (the early part of 
the seventh century), and show that even the remote dales of 
Craven, the least Anglian part of Yorkshire, afforded no sscure 
refuge to the Britons of the plains, the unfortunate heirs of 
Roman civilisation and Roman weakness, The evidence yielded 
by local names does not differ much from that of the same kind 
in other parts of England. It proves that enow of Welshmen 
survived to transmit their names of the principal natural 
features (as Ouse, Derwent, Wharfe, Dun, Roseberrry, Pen-y- 
gent), and of certain towns and villages (as York, Catterick, 
Beverley, and Ilkley), but not enow to hinder the speedy adop- 
tion of the new language, the re-naming of many settlements, and 
the formation of more new ones with Anglian names. The subse- 
quent Danish invasion slightly complicated this matter; but Ithink 
it is safe to say that the changes in Yorkshire were more nearly 
universal than in counties like Devonshire, where we know that the 
descendants of the Welsh constitute the majority, If the names 
of the rivers Swale and Hull be really Teutonic, as Greta un- 
doubtedly is, the fact is significant; for no stream of equal 
magnitude with the Swale, in the south of England, has lost its 
Keltic appellation, 
We do not know much of the Anglian type, as” distinguished 
from the Scandinavian one which ultimately overlaid it almost 
everywhere to a greater or less depth. The cranial form, if one 
may judge of it by the skulls found in the ancient cemetery of 
Lamel-Hill near York, was not remarkably fine, certainly not 
superior to the ancient British type as known to us, to which, 
moreover, it was rather inferior in capacity. There is some re- 
semblance between these Lamel-Hill crania and the Belair or 
Burgundian type of Switzerland, while the Sion or Helvetian 
type of that country bews some likeness to our own Keltic — 
form. 
* Unless indeed York was the “municipal town” dccupied by Cadwalla 
and besieged by his Anglian adversaries. 
