The Celtæ may, therefore, be inferred to have occupied Gaul and Britain in the ages of polished stone, bronze, and of iron, their encroachment on the non-Aryan peoples being regulated by their strength, and the amount of pressure on their rear. The Belgæ probably were not known in Gaul until the later portion of the iron age, and were of small importance as compared with the Celts, whose arms were felt alike in Greece, Italy, Spain, and Asia Minor. The Celts were a tall, fair-haired, blue-eyed race (Xanthochroi), contrasting strongly with the Basque “Melanochroi”, and in those particulars agreeing with the Germans.[153] _The Ancient German Race._ The Germans, in the days of Cæsar, were advancing on the Belgæ in the Rhine provinces, and on the Helvetii in Switzerland, and are recognized by Tacitus,[154] in Britain as the red-haired, tall inhabitants of Caledonia. Subsequently they spread over the west and south of Europe, as Goths, Franks, Scandinavians, English and Normans; in this country sweeping the Brit-Welsh into the hilly fastnesses of Wales, making settlements on many points of the coasts of Ireland, and leaving behind them, to this day, a considerable infusion of German blood in the Celtic and Basque populations. They were, unlike the present inhabitants of North Prussia and southern and middle Germany, a dolicho-cephalic people, their length of head being due, according to Gratiolet, to a frontal instead of an occipital development, which causes the long-headedness of the Basques. The Anglo-Saxon skull is defined by Dr. Thurnam as prognathous, with large facial bones, and with a cephalic index averaging ·75. And these characters are equally to be found in the Gothic, Frankish, and Scandinavian crania. _General Conclusions._ In this outline of the ethnology of Gaul and Britain, it will be seen that two out of the three ethnical elements (if the Belgic be classed with the Celtic), of which the present population is composed, can be recognized in the neolithic users of caves and builders of chambered tombs. A non-Aryan race either identical or cognate with the Basque is the earliest traceable in these areas in the neolithic age, and it probably arrived in Europe by the same route as the Celtic and Germanic, passing westwards from the plains of central Asia. There is no evidence of Spain having been peopled from northern Africa, the identity of the Berber and Kabyle with the Basque being due to their being descended from the same non-Aryan stock in possession of southern and western Europe, and northern Africa. They are to be looked upon as cousins rather than as connected by descent in a right line. The Basque race was probably in possession of Europe for a long series of ages, before hordes either identical or cognate with the Celts gradually crept westward over Germany into Gaul, Spain, and Britain, driving away, or absorbing, the inhabitants of the regions which they conquered. CHAPTER VII.