REVIEWS—INDIGENOUS BACES OF THE EA.BTH. 213 



simple term Roman again, as included in the so-called Pelasgic Race, 

 — what is its value or significance ? It does not embrace the 

 Etruscans ; does it include Oscans, Urnbrians, Sabines, Samnites ? 

 Does it apply to all Ancient Italians south of the Tiber, extending 

 even to Magna Grrsecia ? Or is it, after all only a political term, 

 having no precise ethnographic value at all, but making of every Roman 

 legionary a Roman, just as we may call, if we please, an Indian sepoy a 

 British soldier? Such, as a specimen, is an analysis of the details 

 of this Pelasgic classification according to recognised authorities. 

 But what does the term itself signify ? If we turn to Grote, the one 

 conclusion he is sure about is that the Pelasgi were non-Hellenic ; 

 adding somewhat pungently an application of the comment of 

 Herodotus on old Egyptian theories, to those who pretend to be 

 wise above what is written, in this : — that " the man who carries up 

 his story into the invisible world, passes out of the range of critic- 

 ism!" Turn we again to Latham, and he tells us the Pelasgi were 

 "perhaps Slavonic ;" while Clavier, Larcher, Niebuhr, Miiller, and 

 Baoul Bochette, may all be studied for conflicting theories on the 

 meaning of the term here employed as a definite or definable 

 one. In the table where it occurs, it is adopted only for con- 

 venience, but it is difficult to imagine a less convenient term than one 

 which is the very symbol of controversy and division of opinion. And 

 as the seemingly precise name of Roman is liable to the utmost 

 ambiguity in the hands of the Ethnographer, so is it in 

 like manner with the significant ethnic term " Briton''' here 

 employed in its loose non-scientific sense, as applied to the 

 mere occupants of the British Isles ; as, on the same 

 pages we find Dr. Thurnam quoted as using that of Anglo- Saxon to 

 indicate the clearly defined Germanic race of Pagan colonists of 

 Britain in the centuries immediately succeeding Boman occupa- 

 tion ; while when Dr. Morton is referred to, it is found applied to 

 multifarious colonists of the New World : the very first example 

 betraying the unscientific application of the term to one re- 

 joicing in the thoroughly cambro-celtic name of Gwillym ! In 

 truth, when the Jbnerican Ethnologist takes leisure to analyse the 

 constituents of his own English-speaking fellow citizens ; made up 

 of Celtic : Irish, Scottish, and Welsh, fully as much at least as of Anglo- 

 Saxon -. Scot and Englishman ; not to mention Gallic, Iberian, 

 Italian, Polish, Hungarian, old Dutch, and modern Germanic 

 continental elements ; — still less the hybrid tinges of Bed, or 

 Black blood, which constitute the theme of one of the most interest- 



