Again--a Cornishman loses his native language and speaks English as his mother tongue. Many generations before he did this he differed from the Englishman in speech only. Is his British blood extinguished? No. The chief sign of it has been lost. That is all. So that-- Stocks may intermix, and-- Stocks may lose their characteristics. Now both these phenomena are eminently common in European ethnology; and this is what we expect from history. Two populations, the Roman and the German, have more than doubled their original areas. Were all the old inhabitants, male and female, old and young, in the countries that they appropriated, put to the sword? We hope and believe the contrary. In most cases we _know_ they were not. Sometimes there was intermarriage. This produced intermixture. Sometimes the language, religion, laws, and habits of the conquerors were adopted by the conquered. This was a loss of characteristics. So far greater than the influences of all the other populations of Europe have been those of the Germans and the Romans (to which, for the eastern part of the continent, we must add the Turks), that for nearly half Europe, whenever the question will be one of great intermixture, the basis will be Keltic, Iberic, or Sarmatian as the case may be, with Romans or Germans for the source of the superadded elements. 3. The chief problems of the present volume will, for the present, only be stated; the results being reserved for the conclusion. They are two-- _a._ The extent to which what is commonly called Race is the result of circumstances, or whether circumstances be the effect of race, _i.e._ whether Race (so called) is a cause or an effect? _b._ The extent to which differences of what is called race is an element in national likes and dislikes, predilections or antipathies. It cannot be denied that each of these is a point of practical as well as theoretical importance. * * * * * The areas with which it is most convenient to begin, are those of the two isolated stocks, the _Skipetar_ (Albanian), and the _Iberian_,--Albania and the Spanish peninsula. Of these Albania will be taken first. Many writers have considered the Albanian and the Iberic stocks to be the two oldest in Europe; and there is no want of reasonable grounds for the doctrine. It is not, however, for this reason that they come first in the list. Nor is it because the _Skipetar_ of Albania are the more eastern of the two that they take precedence of the Iberians; although, in the eyes of such inquirers as deduce the European populations from Asia, their position on the frontier of Europe gives good grounds for doing so. The true reason is practical rather than scientific, arising out of the line of criticism which will be found necessary for the forthcoming investigation.