The inhabitants of our islands previous to the Roman invasion are generally described as “Celts”. But they must have been largely a mixed race; and the people with whom they mingled must have modified to some—and perhaps to a large—extent their physique, their customs, and their language. Speculation has run somewhat wild over the question of the composition of the Early Britons. But out of the clash of rival theories there emerges one—and one only—which may be considered as scientifically established. We have certain proof of two distinct human stocks in the British Islands at the time of the Roman Conquest; and so great an authority as Professor Huxley has given his opinion that there is no evidence of any others.[9] The earliest of these two races would seem to have inhabited our islands from the most ancient times, and may, for our purpose, be described as aboriginal. It was the people that built the “long barrows”; and which is variously called by ethnologists the Iberian, Mediterranean, Berber, Basque, Silurian, or Euskarian race. In physique it was short, swarthy, dark-haired, dark-eyed, and long-skulled; its language belonged to the class called “Hamitic”, the surviving types of which are found among the Gallas, Abyssinians, Berbers, and other North African tribes; and it seems to have come originally from some part either of Eastern, Northern, or Central Africa. Spreading thence, it was probably the first people to inhabit the Valley of the Nile, and it sent offshoots into Syria and Asia Minor. The earliest Hellenes found it in Greece under the name of “Pelasgoi”; the earliest Latins in Italy, as the “Etruscans”; and the Hebrews in Palestine, as the “Hittites”. It spread northward through Europe as far as the Baltic, and westward, along the Atlas chain, to Spain, France, and our own islands.[10] In many countries it reached a comparatively high level of civilization, but in Britain its development must have been early checked. We can discern it as an agricultural rather than a pastoral people, still in the Stone Age, dwelling in totemistic tribes on hills whose summits it fortified elaborately, and whose slopes it cultivated on what is called the “terrace system”, and having a primitive culture which ethnologists think to have much resembled that of the present hill-tribes of Southern India.[11] It held our islands till the coming of the Celts, who fought with the aborigines, dispossessed them of the more fertile parts, subjugated them, even amalgamated with them, but certainly never extirpated them. In the time of the Romans they were still practically independent in South Wales. In Ireland they were long unconquered, and are found as allies rather than serfs of the Gaels, ruling their own provinces, and preserving their own customs and religion. Nor, in spite of all the successive invasions of Great Britain and Ireland, are they yet extinct, or so merged as to have lost their type, which is still the