On the continent the only existing populations of Celtic speech are the primitive inhabitants of central Brittany, a population noted for their religious fanaticism and for other characteristics of a backward people. This Celtic speech is claimed to have been introduced about 450–500 A. D. by Britons fleeing from the Saxons. These refugees, if there were any substantial number of them, must have been dolichocephs of either Mediterranean or Nordic race or both. We are asked by this tradition to believe that their long skull was lost, but that their language was adopted by the round skulled Alpine population of Armorica. It is much more probable that the Cymric-speaking Alpines of Brittany have merely retained in this isolated corner of France a form of Celtic speech which was prevalent throughout northern Gaul and Britain before these provinces were conquered by Rome and Latinized and which, perhaps, was reinforced later by British Cymry. Cæsar remarked that there was little difference between the speech of the Belgæ in northern Gaul and in Britain. In both cases the speech was Cymric. Long after the conquest of Gaul by the Goths and Franks Teutonic speech remained predominant among the ruling classes and, by the time it succumbed to the Latin tongue of the Romanized natives, the old Celtic languages had been entirely forgotten outside of Brittany. An example of similar changes of language is to be found in Normandy where the country was inhabited by the Nordic Belgæ speaking a Cymric language before that tongue was replaced by Latin. This coast was ravaged about 300 or 400 A. D. by Saxons who formed settlements along both sides of the Channel and the coasts of Brittany which were later known as the Litus Saxonicum. Their progress can best be traced by place names as our historic record of these raids is scanty. The Normans landed in Normandy in the year 911 A. D. They were heathen, Danish barbarians, speaking a Teutonic tongue. The religion, culture and language of the old Romanized populations worked a miracle in the transformation of everything except blood in one short century. So quick was the change that 155 years later the descendants of the same Normans landed in England as Christian Frenchmen armed with all the culture of their period. The change was startling, but the Norman blood remained unchanged and entered England as a substantially Nordic type. XIV THE ARYAN LANGUAGE IN ASIA In the Ægean region and south of the Caucasus Nordics appear after 1700 B. C. but there were unquestionably invasions and raids from the north for many centuries previous to our first records. These early migrations were probably not in sufficient force to modify the blood of the autochthonous races or to substitute Aryan languages for the ancient Mediterranean and Asiatic tongues.