THE INFLUENCE OP HYBRIDITY. 103 



cross-breedings take place between more than two races, 

 even when these various influences are mixed together, struggled 

 with, and assisted in a thousand ways, so that the question has 

 become almost inextricable to the anthropologist, in the midst 

 of the varied produce resulting from all these combinations, 

 we are astonished to see here and there individuals who have 

 the absolute and complete character of one of the original 

 stock. Whilst there remains among a people a considerable 

 amount of mixed blood, we may always expect to see some 

 one appear who will have the pure characteristics of the race 

 which was believed to be extinguished, and mingled for ever 

 with the blood of others.* 



The most remarkable instance which can be quoted about 

 these crosses, and at the same time the easiest to notice, is 

 that presented by England, where two races live side by side, 

 mixed together, without one having absorbed the other since 

 the time of Strabo, Tacitus, and Julius Caesar. England, iso- 

 lated from Europe, ought necessarily to be a fertile field 

 for the anthropologist, and it will be there where the history 

 of historic and pre-historic races will soonest be made. Emi- 

 nent men work at it with ardour ; and the certainty of re- 

 mounting, through archaeology and palaeontology, to the first 

 races which invaded England, at a time when the use of metals 

 wa v s unknown in the west, makes this study one of the most 

 interesting of the present day. 



Two distinct races divide Great Britain, or, at least, repre- 

 sentatives of two races are found there ; and in the midst of 

 an immense number of intermediate individualities, the least 

 accustomed eye will not fail to distinguish these two funda- 

 mental types, as different as two men with white skins can be. 

 One of these races is composed of tall, strong, powerful men, 

 with transparent skin, and blue eyes ;f the other, with a more 

 tawny complexion, has black, curling hair.J The first were 

 formerly called Caledonians, the second Silurians, very like the 



* By virtue of the law which makes us find a family likeness in an indivi- 

 dual after it has been absent, or rather hidden, for one or more generations, 

 f " Rutike comse, magni artus." Tacitus, Agricola, ii, 11. 

 " Colorati vultus et torti pleruiuque crines." Idem, ibidem. 



