This implies an objection to all the arguments in favour of a Germanic population occupant of Britain anterior to the Christian era, which are based on the name _Belgæ_. (_See_ pp. 61-75.) VI. _The Gaelic branch of the Keltic stock may have been developed in either the British Isles or on the continent._--(Chapter V.) The following list of words in Professor Newman's _Regal Rome_, shewing that a remarkable class of words in Latin were Keltic rather than native and Gaelic rather than Welsh, and which was unpublished when the fifth chapter was written, favours the doctrine of the Gaels having been continental as well as insular to an extent for which I was previously unprepared:-- ENGLISH. LATIN. GAELIC. _Arms_ arma arm. _Weapon_ telum tailm. _Helmet_ galea galia. _Shield_ scutum sgiath. _Arrow_ sagitta saighead. _Coat of Mail_ lorica liureach. _Spoils_ spolia spuill. _Necklace_ monile fail-muineil. _Point_ cuspis cusp. _Spear_ quiris[25] coir. It also favours Lhuyd's hypothesis rather than the Hibernian. (_See_ pp. 88-89.) VII. _The earliest ethnology of Scotland was that the earliest Britons, _i.e._, either British as opposed to Gaelic, or Gaelic which, subsequently, became as British as South Britain itself._ This means that the present Gaels were not aboriginal to the Scotch Highlands, except in the sense that they were aboriginal to Kent or Wales. (_See_ pp. 88-89.) VIII. _The present Scotch Gaels are of Irish origin._ These two propositions go together; involving an objection to the so-called "Caledonian hypothesis" (p. 89), with which they are incompatible. Nevertheless, anything confirmatory of that hypothesis would, _pro tanto_, invalidate the present. The chief facts upon which this doctrine rest are-- 1st. The absence of the term _sliabh_, the current Gaelic form for _mountain_, throughout Scotland--even in the Gaelic parts of it. 2nd. The great extent to which the forms in _aber_ are found northwards (see p. 81). These occur so far beyond the Pict area, that, although so good a writer as Mr. Kemble has allowed himself to make it commensurate with the British, and although his list of compounds of _aber_ has been placed in the present writer's chapter on the Picts, as an illustration of a certain line of criticism, the inference that they were Britons in North-Briton _other than Pict_ is highly probable. Hence in the northern parts, at least, the word _aber_ was used not because the country was Pict, but because it was British. It is well known that the doctrine is, in respect to its results, the current one; from which it differs in resting on ethnological inference, rather than on a piece of history.