The ethnologist, who passes from the history of the varieties of the human species of the world at large, to the details of some special family, tribe, or nation, is in the position of the naturalist who rises from such a work as the Systema NaturÆ, or the RÈgne Animal, to concentrate his attention on some special section or subsection of the sciences of Zoology and Botany. If having done this he should betake himself to some ponderous folio, bulkier than the one which he read last, but devoted to a subject so specific and[2] limited as to have scarcely found a place in the general history of organized beings, the comparison is all the closer. The subject, in its main characteristics, is the same in both cases; but the difference of the details is considerable. A topographical map on the scale of a chart of the world, a manipulation for the microscope as compared with the preparation of a wax model, are but types and illustrations of the contrast. A small field requires working after a fashion impossible for a wide farm; often with different implements, and often with different objects. A dissertation upon the Negroes of Africa, and a dissertation upon the Britons of the Welsh Principality, though both ethnological, have but few questions in common, at least in the present state of our knowledge; and out of a hundred pages devoted to each, scarcely ten would embody the same sort of facts. With the Negro, we should search amongst old travellers and modern missionaries for such exact statements as we might be fortunate enough to find respecting his geographical position, the texture of his hair, the shade of his skin, the peculiarities of his creed, the structure of his language; and well satisfied should we be if anything at once new and true fell in our way. But in the case of the Briton all this is already known to the inquirer, and can be conveyed in a few sentences to the reader. What[3] then remains? A fresh series of researches, which our very superiority of knowledge has developed; inquiries which, with an imperfectly known population, would be impossible. Who speculates to any extent upon such questions as the degrees of intermixture between the Moors and the true Negroes of Nubia? Who grapples with such a problem as the date of the occupation of New Guinea? Such and such-like points are avoided; simply because the data for working them are wanting. Yet with an area like the British Isles, they are both possible and pertinent. More than this. In such countries there must either be no ethnology at all, or it must be of the minute kind, since the primary and fundamental questions, which constitute nine-tenths of our inquiries elsewhere, are already answered.

Minute ethnology must be more or less speculative—the less the better. It must be so, however, to some extent, because it attempts new problems. Critical too it must be—the more the better. It often works with unfamiliar instruments, whose manipulation must be explained, and whose power tested. Again, although the field in which it works be wide, the tract in which it moves may be beaten. An outlying question may have been treated by many investigators, and the results may be extremely different. In British ethnology, the history of opinions only, if[4] given with the due amount of criticism, would fill more than one volume larger than the present.

The above has been written to shew that any work upon such a subject as the present must partake, to a great degree, of the nature of a disquisition: perhaps indeed, the term controversy would not be too strong. The undeniable and recognized results of previous investigators are truisms. That the Britons and Gaels are Kelts, and that the English are Germans is known wherever Welsh dissent, Irish poverty, or English misgovernment are the subjects of notice. What such Kelticism or Germanism may have to do with these same characteristics is neither so well ascertained, nor yet so easy to discover. On the contrary, there is much upon these points which may be well un-learnt. Kelts, perchance, may not be so very Keltic, or Germans so very German as is believed; for it may be that a very slight preponderance of the Keltic elements over the German, or of the German over the Keltic may have determined the use of the terms. Such a point as this is surely worth raising; yet it cannot be answered off-hand. At present, however, it is mentioned as a sample of minute ethnology, and as a warning of the disquisitional character which the forthcoming pages, in strict pursuance to the nature of the subject, must be expected to exhibit.[5]

The extent, then, to which the two stocks that occupy the British Isles are pure or mixed; the characteristics of each stock in its purest form; and the effects of intermixture where it has taken place, are some of our problems; and if they could each and all be satisfactorily answered, we should have a Natural History of our Civilization. But the answers are not satisfactory; at any rate they are not conclusive. Nevertheless, a partial solution can be obtained; a partial solution which is certainly worth some efforts on the part of both the reader and the writer. Other questions, too, curious rather than of practical value, constitute the department of minute ethnology; especially when the area under notice is an island. The date of its occupancy, although impossible as an absolute epoch, can still be brought within certain limits. Whether, however, such limits would not be too wide for any one but a geologist, is another question.

Now, if I have succeeded in shewing that criticism and disquisition must necessarily form a large part of such an ethnology as the one before us, I have given a reason for what may, perhaps, seem an apparent irregularity in the arrangement of the different parts of the subject. With the civil historian, the earliest events come first; for, in following causes to their consequences, he begins with the oldest. The ethnologist, on the[6] other hand, whenever—as is rarely the case—he can lay before the reader the whole process and all the steps of his investigations, reverses this method, and begins with the times in which he lives; so that by a long series of inferences from effect to cause, he concludes—so to say—at the beginning; inasmuch as it is his special business to argue backwards or upwards. Yet the facts of the present volume will follow neither of these arrangements exactly; though, of course, the order of them will be, in the main, chronological. They will be taken, in many cases, as they are wanted for the purposes of the argument; so that if a fact of the tenth century be necessary for the full understanding of one of the fifth, it will be taken out of its due order. Occasional transpositions of this kind are to be found in all works wherein the investigation of doubtful points preponderates over the illustration of admitted facts, or in all works where discussion outweighs exposition.

The period when the British Isles were occupied by Kelts only (or, at least, supposed to have been so) will form the subject of the earlier chapters. The facts will, of course, be given as I have been able to find them; but it may be not unnecessary to state beforehand the nature of the principal questions upon which they will bear.

The date of the first occupancy of the British Isles by man is one of them. It can (as already[7] stated) only be brought within certain wide—very wide—limits; and that hypothetically, or subject to the accuracy of several preliminary facts.

The division of mankind to which the earliest occupants belonged is the next; and it is closely connected with the first. If the Kelts were the earliest occupants of Britain, we can tell within a few thousand years when they arrived. But what if there were an occupation of Britain anterior to theirs?

The civilization of the earliest occupants is a question inextricably interwoven with the other two; since the rate at which it advanced—if it advanced at all—must depend upon the duration of the occupancy, and the extent to which it was the occupancy of one, or more than one, section of mankind. But foreign intercourse may have accelerated this rate, or a foreign civilization may have altogether replaced that of the indigenÆ. The evidence of this is a fourth question.

So interwoven with each other are all these questions, that, although the facts of the first three chapters will be arranged with the special view to their elucidation, no statement of the results will be given until the invasion of the Anglo-Saxons, or the introduction of the great Germanic elements of the British nation, leads us from the field of early Keltic to that of early Teutonic research; and that will not be until the details of[8] the Britons as opposed to the Gaels, of the Gaels as opposed to the Britons, and of the Picts (as far as they can be made out) have been disposed of.

One of the populations of the British Isles, at the present moment, speaks a language belonging to the Keltic, the other one belonging to the Teutonic class of tongues. However, it is by no means certain that the blood, pedigree, race, descent, or extraction coincides with the form of speech: indeed it is certain that it does so but partially. Though few individuals of Teutonic extraction speak any of the Keltic dialects as their mother-tongue, the converse is exceedingly common; and numerous Kelts know no other language but the English. Speech, then, is only prim facie evidence of descent; nevertheless, it is the most convenient criterion we have.

The Keltic class falls into divisions and subdivisions. The oldest and purest portion of the Gaelic Kelts is to be found in Ireland, especially on the western coast. Situated as Connaught is on the Atlantic, it lies beyond the influx of any new blood, except from the east and north; yet from the east and north the introduction of fresh populations has been but slight. Here, then, we find the Irish Gael in his most typical form.

Scotland, like Ireland, is Gaelic in respect to[9] its Keltic population, but the stock is less pure. However slight may be the admixture of English blood in the Highlands and the Western Isles, the infusion of Scandinavian is very considerable. Caithness has numerous geographical terms whose meaning is to be found in the Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, and Icelandic. Sutherland shews its political relations by its name. It is the Southern Land; an impossible name if the county be considered English (for it lies in the very north of the island), but a natural name if we refer it to Norway, of which Sutherland was, at one time, a southern dependency, or (if not a dependency), a robbing-ground. Orkney and Shetland were once as thoroughly Norse as the Faroe Isles or Iceland.

The third variety of the present British population is in the Isle of Man, where a language sufficiently like the Gaelic of Ireland and Scotland to be placed in the same division, is still spoken. Yet the blood is mixed. The Norsemen preponderated in Man; and the constitution of the island is in many parts Scandinavian, though the language be Keltic.

In Wales the language and population are still Keltic, though sufficiently different from the Scotch, Irish, and Manx, to be considered as a separate branch of that stock. It is conveniently called British, Cambrian, and Cambro-Briton.[10] It is quite unintelligible to any Gael. Neither can any Gael, talking Gaelic, make himself understood by a Briton. On the other hand, however, a Scotch and an Irish Gael understand each other; whilst, with some effort, they understand a Manxman, and vice versÂ. So that the number of mutually unintelligible languages of the Keltic stock is two; in other words, the Keltic dialects of the British Isles are referable to two branches—the British for the Welsh, and the Gaelic for the Scotch, Irish, and Manx. The other language of the British Isles is the English, one upon which it is unnecessary to enlarge; but which makes the third tongue in actual existence at the present moment, if we count the Irish, Scotch, and Manx as dialects of the same language, and the fifth if we separate them.

By raising the Lowland Scotch to the rank of a separate language, we may increase our varieties; but, as it is only a general view which we are taking at present, it is as well not to multiply distinctions. I believe that, notwithstanding some strong assertions to the contrary, there are no two dialects of the English tongue—whether spoken east or west—in North Britain or to the South of the Tweed—that are not mutually intelligible, when used as it is the usual practice to use them. That strange sentences may be made by picking out strange provincialisms, and[11] stringing them together in a manner that never occurs in common parlance, is likely enough; but that any two men speaking English shall be in the same position to each other as an Englishman is to a Dutchman or Dane, so that one shall not know what the other says, is what I am wholly unprepared to believe, both from what I have observed in the practice of provincial speech, and what I have read in the way of provincial glossaries.

The populations, however, just enumerated, represent but a fraction of our ethnological varieties. They only give us those of the nineteenth century. Other sections have become extinct, or, if not, have lost their distinctive characteristics, which is much the same as dying out altogether. The ethnology of these populations is a matter of history. Beginning with those that have most recently been assimilated to the great body of Englishmen, we have—

1. The Cornishmen of Cornwall.—They are Britons in blood, and until the seventeenth century, were Britons in language also. When the Cornish language ceased to be spoken it was still intelligible to a Welshman; yet in the reign of Henry II., although intelligible, it was still different. Giraldus Cambrensis especially states that the "Cornubians and Armoricans used a language almost identical; a language which the Welsh,[12] from origin and intercourse, understood in many things, and almost in all."

2. The Cumbrians, of Cumberland, retained the British language till after the Conquest. This was, probably, spoken as far north as the Clyde. Earlier, however, than either of these were—

3. The Picts.—The Cumbrian and Cornish Britons were simply members of the same division with the Welshmen, Welshmen, so to say, when the Welsh area extended south of the Bristol Channel and north of the Mersey. The Picts were, probably, in a different category. They may indeed have been Gaels. They have formed a separate substantive division of Kelts. They may have been no Kelts at all, but Germans or Scandinavians.

But populations neither Keltic nor Teutonic have, at different times, settled in England; populations which (like several branches of the Keltic stock) have either lost their distinctive characteristics, or become mixed in blood, but which (unlike such Kelts) were not indigenous to any of the islands. Like the Germans or Teutons, on the other hand, they were foreigners; but, unlike the Germans or Teutons, they have not preserved their separate substantive character. Still, some of their blood runs in both English and Keltic veins; some of their language has mixed itself with both tongues; and some of their customs[13] have either corrupted or improved our national character. Thus—

1. The battle of Hastings filled England with Normans, French in language, French and Scandinavian in blood, but (eventually) English in the majority of their matrimonial alliances. And before the Normans came—

2. The Danes—and before the Danes—

3. The Romans.—Such is the general view of the chief populations, past and present, of England; of which, however, the Keltic and the Angle are the chief.

The English-and-Scotch, the Normans, the Danes, and the Romans have all been introduced upon the island within the Historical period—some earlier than others, but all within the last 2,000 years, so that we have a fair amount of information as to their history; not so much, perhaps, as is generally believed, but still a fair amount. We know within a few degrees of latitude and longitude where they came from; and we know their ethnological relations to the occupants of the parts around them.

With the Kelts this is not the case. Of Gael or Manxman, Briton or Pict, we know next to nothing during their early history. We can guess where they came from, and we can infer their ethnological relations; but history, in the strict sense of the term, we have none; for the Keltic[14] period differs from that of all the others in being pre-historic. This is but another way of saying that the Keltic populations, and those only, are the aborigines of the island; or, if not aboriginal, the earliest known. Yet it is possible that these same Keltic populations, whose numerous tribes and clans and nations covered both the British and the Hibernian Isles for generations and generations before the discovery of the art of writing, or the existence of a historical record, may be as well understood as their invaders; since ethnology infers where history is silent, and history, even when speaking, may be indistinct. At any rate, the previous notice of the ethnology of the British Isles during the Historical period, prepares us with a little light for the dark walk in the field of its earliest antiquity.

Nothing, as has just been stated, in the earliest historical records of Britain, throws any light upon the original occupation of the British Islands by man; indeed, nothing tells us that Britain, when so occupied, was an island at all. The Straits of Dover may have existed when the first human being set foot upon what is now the soil of Kent, or an isthmus may have existed instead. Whether then it was by land, or whether it was by water, that the population of Europe propagated itself into England, is far beyond the evidence of any historical memorial—far beyond the[15] evidence of tradition. Nothing at present indicates the nature of the primary migration of our earliest ancestors. Neither does any historical record tell us what manner of men first established themselves along the valleys of the Thames and Trent, or cleared the forests along their watersheds. They may have been as much ruder than the rudest of the tribes seen by Paulinus and Agricola, as those tribes were ruder than ourselves. They may, on the other hand, have enjoyed a higher civilization, a civilization which CÆsar saw in its later stages only; one which Gallic wars, and other evil influences, may have impaired.

For the consideration of such questions as these it matters but little whether we begin with the information which the ambition of CÆsar gave the Romans the opportunity of acquiring, or such accounts of the Phoenician traders as found their way into the writings of the Greeks; Polybius (for instance), Aristotle, or Herodotus. A few centuries, more or less, are of trifling importance. The social condition in both cases is the same. There was tin in Cornwall, and iron swords in Kent; in other words, there was the civilization of men who knew the use of metals, both on the side of the soldiers who followed Cassibelaunus to fight against CÆsar, and amongst the miners and traders of the Land's-end. In both cases,[16] too, there was foreign intercourse; with Gaul, where there was a tincture of Roman, and with Spain, where there was a tincture of Phoenician, civilization. This is not the infancy of our species, nor yet that of any of its divisions. For this we must go backwards, and farther back still, from the domain of testimony to that of inference, admitting a pre-historic period, with its own proper and peculiar methods of investigation—methods that the ethnologist shares with the geologist and naturalist, rather than with the civil historian. In respect to their results, they may be barren or they may be fertile; but, whether barren or whether fertile, the practice and application of them is a healthy intellectual exercise.

It must not be thought that the use of metals, and the contact with the Continent, which have just been noticed, invalidate the statement as to the insufficiency of our earliest historical notices. It must not be thought that they tell us more than they really do. It is only at the first view that the knowledge of certain metallurgic processes, and the trade and power that such knowledge developes, are presumptions in favour of a certain degree of antiquity in the occupancy of our island on the parts of its islanders; and it is only by forgetting the insular character of Great Britain that we can allow ourselves to suppose that,[17] though our early arts tell us nothing about our first introduction, they at any rate prove that it was no recent event. "Time," we may fairly say, "must be allowed for such habits as are implied by the use of metals to have developed themselves, and, consequently, generations, centuries, and possibly even millenniums must have elapsed between the landing of the first vessel of the first Britons, and the beginning of the trade with the Kassiterides." As a general rule, such reasoning is valid; yet the earliest known phenomena of British civilization are compatible with a comparatively modern introduction of its population. For Great Britain may have been peopled like Iceland or Madeira, i.e., not a generation or two after the peopling of the nearest parts of the opposite Continent, but many ages later; in which case both the population and its civilization may be but things of yesterday. In the twelfth century, Iceland had an alphabet and the art of writing. Had these grown up within the island itself, the inference would be that its population was of great antiquity; since time must be allowed for their evolution—even as time must be allowed for the growth of acorns on an oak. But the art may be newer than the population, or the population and the art may be alike recent. Hence, as the civilization of the earliest Britons may be newer than the stock to which it belonged, the[18] testimony of ancient writers to its existence is anything but conclusive against the late origin of the stock itself. It is best to admit an absolutely pre-historic period, and that without reservation; and as a corollary, to allow that it may have differed in kind as well as degree from the historic.

There is another fact that should be noticed. The languages of Great Britain are reducible to two divisions, both of which agree in many essential points with certain languages or dialects of Continental Europe. The British was closely, the Gaelic more distantly, allied to the ancient tongue of the Gauls. From this affinity we get an argument against any extreme antiquity of the Britons of the British Isles. The date of their separation from the tribes of the Continent was not so remote as to obliterate and annihilate all traces of the original mother-tongue. It was not long enough for the usual processes by which languages are changed, to eject from even the Irish Gaelic (the most unlike of the two) every word and inflection which the progenitors of the present Irish brought from Gaul, and to replace them by others. So that, at the first view, we have a limit in this direction; yet unless we have settled certain preliminaries, the limit is unreal. All that it gives us is the comparatively recent introduction of the Keltic stock. Varieties of the human species, other than Keltic, may have[19] existed at an indefinitely early period, and subsequently have been superseded by the Kelts. Philology, then, tells us little more than history; and it may not be superfluous to add, that the occupancy of Great Britain by a stock of the kind in question, earlier than the Keltic, and different from it, is no imaginary case of the author's, but a doctrine which has taken the definite form of a recognized hypothesis, and characterizes one of the best ethnological schools of the Continent—the Scandinavian.

For the ambitious attempt at a reconstruction of the earliest state of the human kind in Britain, we may prepare ourselves by a double series of processes. Having taken society as it exists at the present moment, we eject those elements of civilization which have brought it to its present condition, beginning with the latest first. We then take up a smaller question, and consider what arts and what forms of knowledge—what conditions of society—existing amongst the earlier populations have been lost or superseded with ourselves. The result is an approximation to the state of things in the infancy of our species. We subtract (for instance) from the sum of our present means and appliances such elements as the knowledge of the power of steam, the art of printing, and gunpowder; all which we can do under the full light of history. Stripped of these,[20] society takes a ruder shape. But it is still not rude enough to be primitive. There are parts of the earth's surface, at the present moment, where the metals are unknown. There was, probably, a time when they were known nowhere. Hence, the influences of such a knowledge as this must be subtracted. And then come weaving and pottery, the ruder forms of domestic architecture, and boat-building, lime-burning, dyeing, tanning, and the fermentation of liquors. When and where were such arts as these wanting to communities? No man can answer this; yet our methods of investigation require that the question should be raised.

Other questions, too, which cannot be answered must be suggested, since they serve to exhibit the trains of reasoning that depend upon them. Was Britain (a question already indicated) cut off from Gaul by the Straits of Dover when it was first peopled? If it were, the civilization required for the building of a boat must have been one of the attributes of the first aborigines; so that, whatever else in the way of civilization may have been evolved on British ground, the art of hollowing a tree, and launching it on the waves was foreign.

Now it is safe to say that the writers who are most willing to assign a high antiquity to the first occupation of the British Isles by Man, have[21] never carried their epoch so high as the time when Britain and Gaul were joined by an isthmus. On the contrary, they all argue as if the islands were as insular as they are at present, and attribute to the first settlers the construction and management of some frail craft—rude, of course, but still a seaworthy piece of mechanism—after the fashion of the boats of Gaul or Germany; and this is the reasonable view of the subject.

In Mr. Daniel Wilson's "Pre-historic Annals of Scotland," we have the best data for the next portion of the question, viz., the extent to which geological changes have occurred since the first occupancy of our islands. In the valley of the Forth,[1] alterations in the relations of the land and sea to the amount of twenty-five feet have occurred since the art of making deers' horns into harpoons was known in Scotland. Such at least is the inference from the discovery, in the Carse lands about Blair Drummond Moss, of the skeleton of a whale, with a harpoon beside it, twenty-five feet above the present tides of the Forth. As much as can be told by any single fact is told by this; its valuation being wholly in the hands of the geologists.

Then, the bone of an Irish elk, according to one view (but not according to another), gives us a second fact. A rib, with an oval opening, where[22] oval openings should not be, and with an irregular effusion of callus around it, is found under eleven feet of peat. Dr. Hart attributes this to a sharp-pointed instrument, wielded by a human hand, which without penetrating deep enough to cause death, effected a breach on the continuity of the bone, and caused inflammation to be set up. But Professor Owen thinks that a weapon of the kind in question, if left in, to be worked out by the vix medicatrix of Nature, would be fatal, and consequently he prefers the notion of the wound having been inflicted by a weapon which was quickly withdrawn, e.g., the horn of some combative rival of its own kind, rather than the human. Now if it be a difficult matter to say what will, and what will not kill a man in the year '52, much more so is it to speak chirurgically about Irish elks of the Pleiocene period. Hence the evidence of man having been cotemporary with the Megaceros Hibernicus is unsatisfactory.

That a certain amount, then, of change of level between the land and sea, in a certain part of Scotland, has taken place since Scotchmen first hunted whales is the chief fact, relative to the date of our introduction, that we get from geology. From archÆology we learn something more. Those sepulchral monuments which have the clearest and most satisfactory signs of antiquity, contain numerous implements of stone and[23] bone, but none of metal. When metal is found, the concomitant characters of the tomb in which it occurs, indicate a later period. If so, it is a fair inference for the ethnological archÆologist to conclude, that although the earliest colonists reached Britain late enough to avail themselves of boats, their migration was earlier than the diffusion of the arts of metallurgy. And this has induced the best investigators to designate the earliest stage in British ethnology by the name of the Stone Period, a technical and convenient term.

It is the general opinion, that during this period the practice of inhumation, or simple burial, was commoner than that of cremation or burning, though each method was adopted. Over the remains disposed of by the former process, were erected mounds of earth (tumuli or barrows), heaps of stone (cairns), or cromlechs. There are strong suspicions that the practice of SuttÍ was recognized. Around a skeleton, more or less entire, are often found, at regular distances, the ashes of bodies that were burnt; just as if the chief was interred in the flesh, but his subordinates given over to the flames. The posture is, frequently, one which, on the other side of the Atlantic, has called forth numerous remarks. Throughout America, it was observed by Dr. Morton, that one of the most usual forms of burial was to place the corpse in a half upright position, or a sitting attitude,[24] with the knees and hams bent, and the arms folded on the legs. Now this is a common posture in Britain—a clear proof of the extent to which similar practices are independent of imitation. If any ornaments be found with the corpse, they are chiefly of cannel coal. The implements are all of stone, or bone—the celt, the arrow, the spear-head, the adze, and the mallet.

What was the physical aspect of the country at this time? The present, minus the clearings—wood and fen, fen and wood, in interminable succession; woods of oak in the clay soils; of beech on the chalk; of birch, pine, and fir in the northern parts of the island. The boats were essentially monoxyla, i.e., single trees hollowed out, sometimes by stone adzes, oftener by fire. The chief dresses were the skins of beasts.

Such is what archÆology tells us. The other questions belong to the naturalist. What was the ancient Fauna? Whether the earliest men were cotemporaneous with the latest of the extinct quadrupeds, has been already asked—the answer being doubtful. How far the earliest beasts of chase and domestication were the same as the present, is a fresh question. The sheep may reasonably be considered as a recent introduction; but with all the other domestic animals there are, perhaps, as good reasons for deriving them from native species as for considering them to be of foreign origin.[25] The hog of the present breed, may indeed be of continental origin; so may the present cat, horse, and ass. Nevertheless, the hog, cat, horse, and ass, whose bones are found in the alluvial deposits, may have been domesticated. The Devonshire, Hereford, and similar breeds of oxen may be new; but the bos longifrons may have originated some native breeds, which the inhabitants of even the earliest period—the period of stone and bone implements—may have domesticated. The opinion of Professor Owen is in favour of this view; and certainly, though it cannot be enforced by mere authority, it is recommended by its simplicity,—avoiding, as it does, the unnecessary multiplication of causes. The goat was certainly indigenous, but no more certainly domesticated than the equally indigenous deer. This indigenous rein-deer may or may not have been trained. The miserable aliments of the beach, shell-fish and crustacea, constituted no small part of the earliest human food; and so (for the northern part of the isle at least) did eggs, seals, and whales. Surely in these primitive portions of the Stone period our habits must have approached those of the Lap, the SamÖeid, and the Eskimo, however different they may be now.

But metals, in the course of time, were introduced; first bronze, and then iron; gold and lead being, perhaps, earlier than either, earlier too[26] than silver. Of gold we take but little notice. It was not a useful metal; but subservient only to the purposes of barbaric ornament. The next fact is of great importance.

In those tombs where the implements are most exclusively of stone, and where the other signs of antiquity correspond, the skulls are of unusually small capacity. In the next period they are larger. There are also some notable points of difference in the shape. Such at least is the current opinion; although the proofs that such difference is not referable to difference of age or sex, is by no means irrefragable. Still we may take the fact as it is supposed and reported to be.

If we do this, we are prepared for another question. How far is the introduction of metal implements and of new arts, a sign of the introduction of a fresh stock or variety of the human species? How far, too, is the difference in the capacity of the skulls? How far the fact of the two changes coinciding? The answer has generally been in the affirmative. The men who used implements of bronze were Kelts; the men who eked out their existence with nothing better than adzes and arrow-heads of stone, were other than Keltic. They were ante-Keltic aborigines, whom a Keltic migration annihilated and superseded. Such is the widely-spread doctrine. Yet it is doubtful whether the premises bear out the inference—far[27] as it has been recognized. I doubt it myself; because, admitting (for the sake of argument) that there is a difference in the size and the shape of the skulls, it by no means follows that a difference of stock is the only way of accounting for it. Improved implements, taken by themselves, merely denote either a progress in the useful arts, or, what is more likely, some new commercial relations. The same improved implements, if considered as means to an end, denote an improvement in the nutrition of the individuals who used them. The bones of a man who hunts stags and oxen with bronze weapons will carry more flesh, and consequently be more fuller developed than those of a man who, for want of better instruments than flint and bone arrow-heads, feeds chiefly upon whale blubber and shell-fish. Now, what applies to the bones in general, applies—though perhaps in a less degree—to the skull. In the difference, then, between the crania of the Stone and Bronze periods I see no introduction of a new variety of our species, but merely the effects of a better diet, arising from an improvement in the instruments for obtaining it. If the assumption, then, of a pre-Keltic stock be gratuitous, the question as to the date of our population is considerably narrowed. Its introduction (as already indicated) must have been sufficiently late to allow the original affinities between[28] the Keltic dialects of the British Isles, and the Keltic dialects of the European Continent, to remain visible. But as many millenniums would be required for the opposite effect of obliterating the original similarity, this is saying but little. All that it is safe to assert is—

1. That the primitive Britons occupied the islands sufficiently early to allow of the relative levels of the land and sea on the valley of the Forth to alter to the amount of twenty-five feet—there or thereabouts.

2. That they occupied it sufficiently late to allow the common origin of the Gaelic and British tongues to remain visible in the nineteenth century.

This latter position rests upon the supposition that the early inhabitants in question were of the same stock as the present Welsh and Gaels—the contrary doctrine being held to be, not erroneous, but gratuitous and unnecessary.

We are now prepared to find that in certain monuments, less ancient than those of the Stone period, the enclosed relics are of metal, and that this metal is an alloy of copper and tin—bronze—not brass, which is an alloy of copper and zinc. Not only are such relics more elaborate in respect to their workmanship, but the kinds of them are more varied. They are referable indeed to the three classes of warlike instruments, industrial implements, and personal ornaments, but the[29] varieties of each sort are comparatively numerous. Swords and shields, which would be well-nigh impossible accoutrements during the Stone period, now come into use; so do moulds for casting, as well as bracelets and necklaces. In short, the signs of a higher civilization and fresh means for the conquest of either Man or Nature appear.

The evidence that the Bronze period succeeded the Stone, is on the whole satisfactory; indeed its a priori likelihood is so great, as to make a little go a long way. At the same time, it must not be supposed that in each individual case the newest monuments wherein we find bone and stone are older than the oldest wherein we find bronze. No line of demarcation thus trenchant can be drawn; and no proofs of absolute succession thus conclusive can be discovered. Upon the whole, however, there was a time when the early Britons were in the position of the South Sea Islanders when first discovered, i.e., ignorant of the use of metals. As long as the arts of metallurgy are unknown, the notice of the physical conditions of the country is confined to its Flora, its Fauna, and its stone quarries. What was there to cultivate? What was there to hunt or to domesticate? What was there to build with? Now, however, the questions change. What were the mineral resources of the soil? It is not necessary[30] to enlarge on these. The use of coal as a fuel is wholly recent. On the other hand, certain varieties of it were used as ornaments—the cannel coal, and the bituminous shale of Dorsetshire (Kimmeridge clay). So was jet.

The metal first worked was gold; and its use dates as far back as the Stone period; indeed it may belong to the very earliest age of our island; since the localities where it has been found in Great Britain are by no means few; and in early times each was richer than at present. In England, from Alston Moor; in Scotland, from the head-waters of the Clyde; and in Ireland, from the Avonmore, gold for the adornment of even the hunters of the bone spear-head, and the woodsmen of the stone-hatchet might have been procured; and the simple art of working it, although it may possibly have been Gallic in origin, may quite as easily have been native. The chief gold ornaments, torcs, armillÆ, and fibulÆ have been found in association with bronze articles, but not exclusively.

With those archÆologists and ethnologists who believe that the introduction of bronze implements coincided with the advent of a new variety of mankind, the question whether the art of alloying and casting metals was of native or foreign origin, is a verbal one; since it was native or foreign just as we define the term—native to the[31] stock which introduced it on the British soil, foreign to the soil itself. But as soon as we demur to the notion that the earliest Britons were a separate and peculiar stock, and commit ourselves to the belief that they were simply Kelts in a ruder condition, the problem presents itself in a different and more important form. Was the art of making an alloy of tin and copper self-evolved, or was it an art which foreign commerce introduced? Was the art of casting such alloys British? It is well to keep the two questions separate. The preliminary facts in respect to the history of the bronze metallurgy are as follows:—

1. The peculiar geographical distribution of tin, which of all the metals of any wide practical utility is found in the fewest localities, those localities being far apart, e.g., Britain and Malacca—

2. The wide extent of country over which bronze implements are found. Except in Norway and Sweden, where the use of iron seems to have immediately followed that of stone and bone, they have been found all over Europe—

3. The narrow limits to the proportions of alloy—nine-tenths copper, and one-tenth tin—there or thereabouts—in the majority of cases.

4. The considerable amount of uniformity in the shape of even those implements wherein a considerable variety of form is admissible. Thus the bronze sword—a point hereafter to be noticed—is[32] almost always long, leaf-shaped, pointed, and without a handle.

The last three of these facts suggest the notion that bronze metallurgy originated with a single population; the first, that that population was British. Yet neither of these inferences is unimpeachable.

The notion that the bronze implements themselves were made in any single country, and thence diffused elsewhere, has but few upholders; since, in most of the countries where they have been found, the moulds for making them have been found also. Hence the doctrine that the raw material—the mixed metal only—was brought from some single source is the more important one. Yet chemical investigations have modified even this.[2] The proportions in question are the best, and they are easily discovered to be so. Seven parts copper to one of tin has been shewn by experiment to be too brittle, and fifteen parts copper to one of tin too soft, for use. Within these proportions the chief analyses of the ancient bronze implements range. The exact proportion of ten copper to one of tin, Mr. Wilson has shewn to be an overstatement. All then that we are warranted to infer is, that Britain was the chief source of the tin.

[33]

This is a great fact in the annals of our early commerce, but not necessarily of much importance in the natural history of our inventions; since it by no means follows that because Cornwall supplied tin to such adventurous merchants as sought to buy it, it therefore discovered the art of working it.

The chief reason for believing that the art of working in any metal except gold was as foreign to Britain as the alphabet was to Greece, rests on a negative fact, of which too little notice has been taken. Copper is a metal of which England produces plenty. It is a metal, too, which is the easiest worked of all, except gold and lead. It is the metal which savage nations, such as some of the American Indians, work when they work no other; and, lastly, it is a metal of which, in its unalloyed state, no relics have been found in England. Stone and bone first; then bronze or copper and tin combined; but no copper alone. I cannot get over this hiatus—cannot imagine a metallurgic industry beginning with the use of alloys. Such a phenomenon is a plant without the seed; and, as such, indicates transplantation rather than growth.

This view assists us in our chronology. If the art of working in bronze be a native and independent development, its antiquity may be of any amount—going back to 3000 B.C. as easily as to[34] 2000 B.C., and to 2000 B.C. as easily as to 1000 B.C. It may be of any age whatever, provided only that it be later than the Stone period. But if it be an exotic art, it must be subsequent to the rise of the Phoenician commerce. Such I believe to have been the case. That the Britons were apt learners, and that they soon made the art their own, is likely. The existence of bronze and stone moulds for adzes and celts proves this.

The effects of the introduction of metal implements would be two-fold. It would act on the social state of the occupants of the British Isles, and act on the physical condition of the soil. The opportunities of getting stones and bones for the purposes of warfare, would be pretty equally distributed over the islands, so that the means of attack and defence would be pretty equal throughout; but the use of bronze would give a vast preponderance of power to certain districts, Cornwall, Wales, and the copper countries. The vast forests, too, upon which stone hatchets would have but little effect, would be more easily cleared, and their denizens would be more successfully hunted.

Amber ornaments are found along with the implements of bronze. Do these imply foreign commerce—commerce with the tribes of Courland and Prussia—the pre-eminent amber localities? Not necessarily. Amber, in smaller quantities, is found in Britain.[35]

Glass beads, too, are found. This, I think, does imply commerce. At any rate, I am slow to believe that the art of fusing glass was of indigenous growth. The use of it was, most probably, a concomitant of the tin trade.

Undoubted specimens of weaving and undoubted specimens of pottery, occur during the Bronze period. Lead, too, is found in some of the bronze alloys; the word itself being, apparently, of Keltic origin. Whether the same could not be referred to the Stone period is uncertain. It is probable, however, that whilst the implements were of stone and bone, the dress was of skin.

Nothing has yet been said about the dwellings of the early islanders. This is because it is difficult to assign a date to their remains. They may belong to the Bronze—they may belong to the Stone period. They may be more recent than either. At any rate, however, relics of ancient domestic architecture exist. A foundation sunk in the earth, with stone walls of loose masonry, and covered, most probably, with reeds and branches, suggests the idea of a subterranean granary, for which the old houses of the earliest Britons have been mistaken; but, nevertheless, it belonged to a house. On the floor of this we find charred bones, and enormous heaps of oyster and mussel shells. Stone handmills, too, denote the use of corn; though from the character of the ancient[36] Flora, vegetable forms of food must have been rarer than animal.

Iron was known in CÆsar's time. How much earlier is doubtful. So was silver. Both were of later date than gold and bronze; and more than this it is not safe to say. Of the great monolithic buildings, it is reasonable to suppose that they are later than the Stone, and earlier than the Historical, period. Druidism, however, in its germs may be of any antiquity; not, however, if we suppose that the first introduction of bronze coincided with the first introduction of the Kelts.

An Iron period succeeds the Bronze; but it will not be the subject of our immediate consideration, inasmuch as it coincides pretty closely with the historic epoch. The sequence, however, requires further notice. That there should be a period in the history of mankind when the use of metals, and the arts of metallurgy were wholly unknown, and that during such a period, imperfect implements of bone and stone should minister to the wants of an underfed and defenceless generation, is not so much a particular fact in British ethnology as a general doctrine founded upon our a priori views, and applicable to the history of man at large. For if each of the useful arts have its own proper origin, referrible to some particular place, time, and community, there must have been an era when it was wanting to mankind. Hence,[37] an ante-metallic age is as much the conception of the speculator, as the discovery of the investigator.

The order in which the metals are discovered, the leading problem in what may be called the natural history of metallurgy, is far more dependant upon induction. Induction, however, has given the priority to copper, just as is expected from the comparative reducibility of its ores—lead and gold being put out of the question. So that it is not so much the general fact of the order of succession in respect to the Stone, Copper, and Iron periods that the laudable investigations of British archÆologists have established as the nature of the concomitant details, the modifications of the periods themselves, and the exact character of their sequence. Under each of these heads there is much worth notice. The difference between the shape and size of the skulls of the Stone and Bronze periods has been broadly asserted—perhaps it has been exaggerated, at any rate it has formed the basis of an hypothesis. The substitution of a Bronze for a Copper period in Britain is an important modification, mainly attributable to the existence of tin. The comparative completeness of the sequence is interesting. It by no means follows that it should be regular. In Norway there is no Bronze period at all; but Bone and Stone in the first instance, and Iron immediately afterwards.

[1] See Wilson's "Pre-historic Annals of Scotland."