14 Mr. John M. Dickson on 



examination such casual references to race questions as might 

 appear from time to time in the daily papers or such other 

 ephemeral publications, with the result that almost universal 

 misconception prevailed even as to what race or races they in 

 Ireland belonged. Thus they, continually heard the short dark- 

 haired aborigines (still plentiful in this country) referred to as 

 Celts or the Celtic fringe of the population, and their peculiarities 

 of disposition described as the Celtic temperament. He hoped 

 to show them that these statements were direcdy opposite to the 

 facts. Even Sir Horace Plunkett, whose ample experience in 

 Ireland should have made him familiar with both types of 

 the population, in his " Ireland in the New Century" habitually 

 misapplied the term Celtic. But a more typical example of this 

 false ethnography was to be found in a new geography published 

 in 1902 by one Meiklejohn, where on page 19 they read — "The 

 Celtic race has been gradually edged off to the extreme West of 

 Europe, the North-West of Scotland, the West of Ireland, the 

 West of England, and the West of France ; at one time it 

 inhabited almost the Western half of Europe." Now, with the 

 rather remarkable omission of Spain and Portugal, the above 

 fairly described the distribution, not of the Celtic, but of the old 

 Mediterranean, race, and the phrase "edged off" very happily 

 described the process ; but he hoped to show that the Celts had 

 in every instance done the " edging off." All competent 

 ethnologists now held that the population of the British Islands 

 was derived from two races — one the aboriginal race of Western 

 Europe, in stature averaging 5ft. 4in., with black and slightly 

 curly hair, dark or dark-grey eyes, and a peculiar pallor of com- 

 plexion ; the other with an average stature of 5ft. gin., with fair 

 or reddish hair and a preponderance of blue eyes, together with a 

 more or less florid or generally suffused colour. The latter was 

 now named the Gallo-Belgic race, of which the first representatives 

 to reach Britain were the Celts, and he proposed to call to the 

 attention of his audience what confirmation of that view might be 



