PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. 839 



Hunterian lecturer, has come to the conclusion from his craniological investipra- 

 tions that the brachycephalic Alpine race was evolved on Europpan soil, whilst 

 Dr. C. S. Myers has been led hv his researches on Eprvptian skulls to conclude 

 that, ' in spite of the various infiltrations of foreig-n blood in the past, modern 

 Egypt contains a homooreneous population which frraduallv shifts its averasre 

 character as we proceed southwards from the shores of the Mediterranean to 

 Nubia beyond the First Cataract.' 



It is not impossible that Alpine environment mavhave acted upon the shape of 

 the sliuU of the ox a.s well as that of man. We know from the examination cf 

 the fauna of the Lake dwellin<2fs of Switzerland tlint the Celtic ox (Bos lonai- 

 frons) was there the common type, and its descendants still continue to be the 

 tvpical breed along the Alpine' chain. This ox is characterised by its strong'ly 

 developed occipital region and its small horns curved forward and inward. As 

 it differs so essentially from the urus (Bos prhnigenins) and from the longr-horned 

 cattle of the Mediterranean lands, it seems not unlikely that the peculiar cranial 

 formation mav have been evolved under mountainous environment. 



It is now clear that differences in the shape of the skull and in the colour of the 

 skin, hair, and eves cannot be at all implicitly relied on as criteria of race. The 

 defenders of the" non-Arvan character of the dark races of Greece, Italy, Spain, 

 France, and the British Isles have now to depend on two arguments only, one of 

 which is linguistic, the other sociolog-ical. It is admitted that it is very difficult 

 to point to any non-Aryan survivals in the vocabularies of the languages of these 

 countries, and it is also admitted that in them all the tense system of the Aryans 

 has been taken over in its entirety. Neither Kretschmer nor anyone else has 

 ventured to affirm that there is any survival of non-Aryan syntactical forms in 

 Greek, the language of all others in which the Ayran tense system is found in 

 its greatest delicacy and perfection. But we know that in all cases where an 

 Aryan language has without doubt been adopted by a non-Aryan folk the tense 

 system is invariably broken up. No better example than this is needed than 

 ordinary 'pigeon ' English. So difficult is it for the defenders of the non- Aryan 

 theory "of the origin of the aborigines of Greece to maintain their position that 

 one of the latest. Professor Burrows, has to rely on certain supposed svntactical 

 survivals of a non-Arvan language which Sir John Rhys believes that he has found 

 in Welsh and Irish and in the remarkable resemblance which Professor Morris 

 Jones thinks that he has traced between the syntax of those languages and that 

 of Berber and ancient Egyptian. 



Yet when we examine the evidence on which Sir John Rhys relies, it turns 

 out to be only three Welsh and Cornish oghams, written not in pure Celtic, but 

 in do? Latin, and also two Irish oghams, which show a looseness in the u.se of the 

 genitive suffix at a time when final syllables were dropping out of use in Irish. 

 Sir John Rhys supposes that the non-Arvan inhabitants of these islands derived 

 their Gaelic" speech from a people whom he terms Celticans, who spoke Goidelic, 

 and who were followed bv the Brythons, who found the aborigines already 

 Celticised. Professor Morris Jones freely admits that the aborigines must have 

 borrowed the full Aryan tense system, a fact in itself sufficient, from what I have 

 aireadv said, to arouse grave suspicions as to the validity of any arguments based 

 on supposed fundamental grammntical differences. But this supposed taking over 

 of the full Aryan tense system bv the non-Aryan aboriaines of these islands is 

 rendered all the more miraculous from the circumstance that Sir John Rhys holds 

 that his Celticans who spoke Goidelic ' came over not later than the great move- 

 ments which took place in the Celtic world of the Continent in the sixth and fifth 

 centuries before our era.' that the Brythons came over to Britain between the time 

 of Pytheas and that of Julius Cfesar,' and that the Brythons were not likely to 

 come into contact on anv large scale with the aborigines 'before they had been 

 to a considerable extent ' Celticised.' It is thus assumed that it was pos.«ible 

 for the aborigines to have been so completely Celtici.«ed as to have adopted the 

 Aryan tense system, as well as the Aryan vocabulary, in its fulnes.s in the interval 

 between the "sixth or fifth century and the second century B.C. Yet English has 

 been the master speech in Britain for many centuries, ivnd that, too, when reading 



