250 



NEW GENERA AND SPECIES OP CYSTIDEA. 



[1854. 



Having established the Germanic nomades as a settled people 

 in the northern peninsula still occupied by one great branch of 

 the Germanic stock, the course pursued by them when they in 

 turn became the aggressors is abundantly manifest, even now, 

 on the map of Europe. Passing over into Denmark, and to a 

 great extent displacing and dispossessing the Kymri, they 

 entered Central Europe from that point d'appui, penetrating 

 like a wedge between the Gauls and the Sarmatians, and gra- 

 dually occupying the whole modern Germanic area between the 

 Elbe and the Rhine. This is the movement which I conceive 

 manifested itself by that overflowing of the Gauls into Central 

 Italy, by means of which they, and thus also, indirectly, the Ger- 

 manic aggressors on their rear, began, for the first time, to take 

 their part in the great drama of the nations. Then it was that 

 the Gallic population, pressed on from the north-east and confined 

 on the west by the Atlantic, passed over into Britain : not, in- 

 deed, occupying it for the first time with a Keltic population, 

 but intruding upon the older Keltic occupants, the Gallic Cantii, 

 Belgee, and others of those newer southern tribes, whose sym- 

 pathy with their continental brethren first exposed their country 

 to the aggressive arms of Rome. Few questions in ancient 

 ethnology have been more keenly disputed than the Germanic 

 or Keltic character of the Belgae of Picardy; but nearly all 

 ethnologists now agree in assuming that the Belgre of Britain came 

 from Belgic Gaul, and in the opinion that the continental Belgre 

 were Kelts. These points being assumed, all that we learn of the 

 Belgre from Cassar — their warlike hardihood in maintaining the 

 passes of the Rhine, the diversity of their dialect from the older 

 Gauls, and the union and consanguinity recognized among 

 themselves (Cks. Bell. Gall., XL, 4) — confirm the idea of their 

 recent migration from the eastern shores of the Rhine, and the 

 consequent recentness of the Germanic intrusion of which this 

 was a product. 



The same great Germanic migration from the north into the 

 centre of Europe, pressing southward, drove a part of the inter- 

 cepted Keltre to seek an outlet down the valley of the Danube, 

 encountering in that fertile region Illyrian and Thracian occu- 

 ])ants, and mingling with or displacing them in that rich country, 

 the fertility and many natural advantages of which have so often 

 contributed to make it the theatre of contending claimants. This 

 may account for the two names, Danube and Iser: the former 

 the Keltic name, afterwards adopted by the Romans, while the 

 latter was accepted by the Greeks. When Alexander the Great, 

 in 335 B.C., moved against the Thracians, he found the Kelts 

 already settled to the east of the Adriatic, and received offers of 

 alliance from them, not as a recent band of strange intruders, 

 but as the proud and ambitious aggressors, who, at a later period, 

 under Brennus, invaded Macedonia and iEtolia, and even attacked 

 the holy Delphic shrine. The Keltic tribes, thus cut off from 

 the great stock, and compelled to retrace their course, not only 

 penetrated eastward, as we have seen, into Thrace, but passed 

 over into Asia Minor, where they peopled Galatia; while, if we 

 hold to the true Kelticity of the Keltic element of the Celtiberi 

 of Spain, we may account for a similar overflow of the Gallic Kelts 

 into the Iberian peninsula. 



Thus we have the non-Indo-Germanic Phoenician, Punic, 

 Etruscan, and other Semitic elements, passing by the southern- 

 most route, from the shores of the Levant, into Southern Europe, 

 and consequently not diffused as from a common centre, but 

 occupying isolated and widely scattered positions. The oldest 

 branch of the great Indo-European family of nations, the Gallic 

 Kelts, follows by the southern land passage, preceding the 

 classic races, and contributing to them a large portion of the 



philological elements by which they are known to us. How far 

 they may also have contributed to their ethnological elements is 

 uncertain. Whence, indeed, the Hellenic stock is derived is still 

 a problem scarcely yet attempted to be solved. Was it derived 

 from Italy to Greece, as Dr. Latham inclines, not without reason, 

 to believe (Ethnol. of Europe, p. 97), or from Greece to Italy? 

 Was it the product oT an intermixture of Keltic and Pelasgic 

 blood, or of Pelasgo-Keltic and Semitic blood ? Intermixture of 

 blood, not purity of race, seems the law of highest development 

 in the historic races ; and hence, perhaps, it is that the old Keltic 

 migration moved on westward and diffused itself over the great 

 central area of transalpine Europe through long unrecorded 

 centuries, only making itself known by the shock with which it 

 was rent in pieces when it came into collision with the younger 

 historic races. Behind these Kelts came the Scytho-Sarmatian, 

 stock, still occupying to a great extent its original European 

 area, though taking up so small and insignificant a section of the 

 historic page; while the younger Germanic stock, Esau-like, 

 seizing the birthright and the portion of the elder, has over- 

 stepped it in the race, preoccupied the area of the displaced 

 Kelts, shared in the spoils, and borne a prominent part in the 

 reinvigoration of Southern Europe; and now entering oir the 

 possession of this vast continent of America, and of that other 

 new world which lies sheltered in the temperate zone of the 

 southern hemisphere, the Germanic — or as we too limitedly de- 

 signate it, the Anglo-Saxon — -race is entering on fresh aggressions 

 and claiming a wider theatre for the arena of its triumphs. 

 Whether the stirring among the Lithuanic and Slavonic races of 

 Eastern Europe, which now thrills us with the rumours of war, 

 and shakes all Europe with the coming struggle, be any symptom 

 of the long dormant energies of her Scytho-Sarmatian stock 

 awaking at length to assert the claims of a long-proscribed pri- 

 ority of birthright, is a question which had attracted the notice 

 of Panslavic students of ethnology before it forced itself on the 

 attention of European diplomatists. 



Oa some New Genera and Species of Cystiilea from tile 

 Tx'eiiton l*imestoiie« 



Read before the Canadian Institute, February 11th, by E. Billings, 

 Barrister-at-Law, Bytovm, Canada West. 



(Concluded from page 218.) 



We pass now to the examination of cne of the most extraordi- 

 nary organisms yet discovered in the palaeozoic rocks. It is no 

 doubt a true Cystidean, but differing in one remarkable particu- 

 lar widely from any hitherto described. It has an oval or heart- 

 shaped body, the broad base of which rests upon the usual short 

 tapering stem of the group, while from its pointed upper extremity 

 arise two long, slender, flexible arms or tentacula. One side is 

 regularly formed of large plates, like those of. the genus Hemi- 

 cosmites, but the other is almost entirely occupied by an immense 

 opening that extends from near the top quite to the base, and 

 which appears to have been covered only by an integument, 

 strengthened by small angular plates in a manner similar to the 

 protection drawn over the cup in certain species of the Crinoidea.* 

 It is constructed as if one side of a Cystidean had been cut away 

 and removed, and the iqjper part of an encrinite placed in the 

 space thus made vacant. In several specimens, although the 

 integument has long since disappeared, yet the small plates still 

 remain, occupying the cavity. In one species they are esceed- 



* See Miller's description of the plated integument of Ptatiacrinus caput Mcduace, in 

 the Natural History of the Criaoidua, p. 53. 



