580 The Silures. 



type, no man knows. Possibly the cave men of 

 Dordogne in France, who carved daggers out of Rein- 

 deer horns, and cut the figure of the Mammoth on his 

 own tusk, may now be represented in Europe by the 

 Laplanders (Mongolian), gradually driven north by the 

 encroachment of later and more powerful nations. Or 

 they may have been dark-complexioned, black-haired 

 and black-eyed Melanochroi, of whom the Basques of 

 Spain are the least obliterated representatives, and 

 traces of whom, according to Professor Huxley, are still 

 among us in the black-haired portion of our Celtic 

 population, and in the swarthy sons of Italy and 

 Spain. 1 



' Early Greek writers,' says Mr. William F. Skene in 

 his ' History of Celtic Scotland ' (1876), ' seem to have 

 had a persuasion that the portion of the inhabitants of 

 Britain who were more particularly connected with the 

 working of tin, possessed peculiarities which distin- 

 guished them from the rest.' These people the Silures 

 inhabited the Cassiterides, now called the Scilly 

 Islands, and as quoted from Diodorus, were ' singularly 

 fond of strangers, and, from their intercourse with 

 foreign merchants, civilised in their habits.' This in- 

 tercourse arose from traffic in tin. In ' Critiques and Ad- 

 dresses ' (1873), Professor Huxley states that, 'Eighteen 

 hundred years ago the population of Britain comprised 

 people of two types of complexion the one fair and the 

 other dark. The dark people resembled the Aquitani 

 and the Iberians, the fair people were like the 

 Belgic Gauls,' and the Silures who had ' curly hair 

 and dark complexions,' within historical times 'were 

 predominant in certain parts of the west of the 

 southern half of Britain, while the fair stock appears 

 1 Journal of the Ethnological Society,' vol. ii. 1871, pp. 382, 404. 



