INTEEMINGLING- OF RACES 259 



ception of the northern counties, where there is a consid- 

 erable proportion of English and Scotch, are in the main 

 descended from two savage tribes, the Iberian and Turan- 

 ian, both probably Mongolian admixtures, with the addi- ' 

 tion of some blood of the conquering and ruling Celtic 

 Aryans, who genetically must have been more or less in- 

 tercrossed with Iberian and Turanian tribes by the time 

 they reached the island. Comparatively close inter- 

 breeding for at least ten centuries has produced the 

 Irish of to-day. 



The original population of Britain, as of Ireland, was 

 Iberian overlaid with Turanian in the north and some 

 other Mongoloid tribes in the south. These races and the 

 types they produced by intermarriage formed the bulk of 

 the population even up to the time of Caesar's invasion, 

 though the ruling classes were probably Celtic" Aryans. 

 The Romans, anthropologists tell us, made little change 

 in the racial character of the inhabitants ; but this state- 

 ment must be taken with some reservation. It is hardly 

 likely that the large garrisons kept by the Roman Empire 

 for 500 years left no descendants. As a population, per- 

 haps, the racial characteristics were not changed to a 

 noticeable degree; nevertheless, a comparatively few 

 thousand persons with Roman blood may have had some 

 considerable effect on the nation as individuals, and the 

 probable presence of this germ plasm must not be counted 

 as negligible. However this may be, the matter is per- 

 haps of little importance as far as the Scotch and Eng- 

 lish of to-day are concerned, for the greater part of these 

 early peoples, as well as the descendants of the Jutes who 

 entered the country in the fifth century, were extermi- 

 nated by the Nordic Aryans that invaded the country 



