NA TURK 



217 



THURSDAY, JANUARY 7, 1S86 



THE RACES OF BRITAIN 

 The Races of Britain; a Coniribiition to tlu Ant /tro- 

 pology of Western Europe. By John Beddoe, M.U., 

 F.R.S., &c. (London: Trubner ; Bristol : Arrowsmith. 

 1885.) 



BELIEVING that after thirty years of labour his 

 opportunities for observation are not likely to add 

 much to his store of facts, or materially alter their signifi- 

 cance in his own eyes. Dr. Beddoe has brought together 

 his numerous contributions to the ethnology of the 

 British Isles, and, with the addition of much new matter, 

 has arrayed them before us in such a manner as to show 

 his own conclusions, and to form " some small part of a 

 solid platform " whereon future anthropologists, with 

 antiquaries and philologists, may ultimately build a more 

 complete and certain structure. 



Dr. Beddoe's mode of procedure is to make ex- 

 tensive observations on the physical characters of the 

 present inhabitants of our islands, and on those of the 

 adjoining parts of the Continent which are the reputed 

 cradles of the various elements of our race, and to com- 

 pare the results with the records of history as far as they 

 are available. The physical characters to which he 

 attaches most importance are colour of hair and eyes, 

 head-form, and stature, and of these he has collected a 

 very large number of observations on a systematic plan, 

 and hence the "numerical method" of studying anthro- 

 pology which he first inaugurated in 1853, and which 

 has since been largely followed by continental observers. 

 Dr. Beddoe attaches most importance to colour, be- 

 cause he believes that " the colour of the hair is so 

 nearly permanent in races of men as to be fairly trust- 

 worthy evidence in matters of ethnical descent ; and that 

 nearly as much may be said for the colour of the eyes.'' 

 With regard to head-form he complains of the great 

 dearth of measurements of modern British skulls, the 

 skulls in our museums being chiefly those of criminals, 

 lunatics, and paupers, and therefore of little value ; and 

 he finds from personal experience that the accurate mea- 

 surements of living heads are alike difficult to make and 

 to obtain. He supplies tables, however, of a considerable 

 number of measurements of heads obtained by himself or 

 his friends in different parts of the country. The statistics 

 of stature and weight collected by Dr. Beddoe have been 

 dealt with in a separate essay, and as they were in- 

 corporated with others of a similar kind collected by the 

 Anthropometric Committee of the British Association, 

 and published in their final report for 1883, they are, 

 therefore, not republished in his present volume. 



It is to his extensive observations on the colour of the 

 hair and eyes that Dr. Beddoe chiefly trusts for his 

 analysis of the racial distribution of our existing popula- 

 tion, and for the purpose of more convenient and definite 

 comparison he adopts a formula which serves as an 

 "index of nigrescence." Having classified the colour of 

 the hair as red (R), fair (F), brown (B), dark (D), and 

 black (N), " the gross index," he says, "is gotten by sub- 

 tracting the number of red and fair-haired persons from 

 Vol. xxxni.— No. 845 



that of the dark-haired, together with twice the black- 

 haired. I double the black, in order to give its proper 

 value to the greater tendency to melanosity shown 

 thereby ; while brown (chestnut) is regarded as neuter, 

 though most persons placed in Class B are fair-skinned, 

 and approach more nearly in aspect to the xanthous than 

 the melanous variety : — 



D 4- 2N - R 



index. 



From the gross index, the net, or percentage index, is of 

 course easily obtained." 



Dr. Beddoe is quite alive to the want of uniformity in 

 the manner of observing, to the different significance of 

 the terms employed for the colours of hair and eyes, and 

 to peculiarities in observers themselves, but as the data 

 he makes use of were collected by himself, the personal 

 equation of the observer and the terms employed are 

 constant. He does not explain the principle on which 

 his classification of colour of hair and eyes, is based, and 

 it would seem to be the result of combinations which his 

 very extensive observations have suggested as the most 

 constant and consistent with each other and with other 

 physical characters, as he claims for it a closer apposite- 

 ness for defining racial distinctions than other schemes. 

 It differs from the plans of Virchow, Vanderkindere, and 

 Kollmann, and other continental anthropologists, and 

 from that of the Anthropometric Committee, which is 

 based on the simple anatomical arrangement of pigment 

 in and on the surface of the iris, hair colour being 

 deemed of secondary importance both from the difficulty 

 of diagnosis and its greater changeableness with age. 



Dr. Beddoe's account, extending over eleven chapters, 

 of the prehistoric races, and the various conquests of the 

 Romans, Anglo-Saxons, Danes, and Normans, and the 

 fresh blood which they introduced into the country, is 

 very fully and impartially rendered. The natives of 

 South Britain at the time of the Roman conquest, accord- 

 ing to Dr. Beddoe, " consisted mainly of several strata, 

 unequally distributed, of Celtic-speaking people, who in 

 race and physical type, however, partook more of the tall 

 blond stock of Northern Europe than of the thick-set, 

 broad-headed, dark stock which Broca has called Celts. 

 . . . Some of these layers were Gaelic in speech, some 

 Cymric ; they were both superposed on a foundation 

 principally composed of the long-headed dark races of 

 the Mediterranean stock, possibly mingled with fragments 

 of still more ancient races, Mongoliform or Allophylian. 

 This foundation-layer was still very strong and coherent 

 in Ireland and the north of Scotland, where the subse- 

 quent deposits were thinner, and in some parts partially 

 or wholly absent ... no Germans, recognisable as such 

 by speech as well as by person, had as yet entered 

 Britain." 



Dr. Beddoe appears to hold a middle place between 

 the writers who believe, on the one hand, in the e.xter- 

 mination of the native races by the Anglo-Saxons, and on 

 the other in their extensive survival in all parts of the 

 country ; while he attaches more importance to the new 

 blood introduced by the Danes and Normans than is 

 commonly admitted. 



The portion of the work devoted to an analysis of the 

 racial elements of the present inhabitants of the British 

 Isles and adjoining countries of Western Europe consists 



