mains of a fossil whale recently exhumed in Blair Drummond moss (twenty miles from the nearest point of the river Forth where, by any possibility, a whale could nowadays be stranded), having beside it a rude harpoon of deer's horn-speaking plainly of the co-existence, in those remote pre-Celtic times, of human inhabitants. Even above ground there are striking relics scattered over Europe which it would be hazardous to assign to any race known to history. Those circles of upright stones, of which Stonehenge is the most familiar example, date back to an unknown antiquity. They are found throughout Europe, from Norway to the Mediterranean; and manifestly they must have been erected by a numerous people, and been faithful exponents of a general sentiment, since we find them in so many countries. They are commonly called Celtic or Druidic; not because they were raised originally by Druids, but because they had been used in the Druidical worship, though erected, it may be, for other uses, or dedicated to other divinities, even as the temples of Paganism afterwards served for the solemnities of Christianity. All that we know is, that, having neither date nor inscription, they must be older than written language,-for a people who can write never leave their own names or exploits unchronicled. The ancients were as ignorant on this matter as ourselves; even tradition is silent; and, at the period of the Roman invasion, the origin of those monuments was already shrouded in obscurity. A revolution, therefore, must have intervened between the time of their erection and the advent of the Legions; and what revolution could it be in those days save a revolution of race? "The Celta," says Dr Wilson," are by no means to be regarded as the primal heirs of the land, but are, on the contrary, comparatively recent intruders. Ages before their migration into Europe, an unknown Allophylian race had wandered to this remote island of the sea, and in its turn gave place to later Allophylian nomades, also destined to occupy it only for a time. Of these ante-historical nations, archæology alone reveals any traces."

Passing from this strange and solemn spectacle of the death and utter extinction of human races, once living and enjoying themselves amidst those very scenes where we ourselves now pant and revel in the drama of existence, let us look upon the face of Europe as it appears when first the light of history broke upon it. Since then, there have been remarkable declines, many minglings, but no extinction of races. As if war and rivalry were a permanent attribute of the species, when the curtain first rises upon Europe, it is a struggle of races that is discernible through the gloom. A dark-skinned race, long settled in the land, are fighting doggedly with a fair-skinned race of invaders from the East. The dark-skins were worsted, but still survive-definitely in detached groups, and indefinitely as a leaven to entire populations. That dark-skinned race have been called Iberians,—the fair-skinned new-comers were the Indo-Europeans, headed by the Gaels or Celts. When the two

races first met in Europe-the blond from the south-east, meeting the dark in the west-they encountered each other as natural enemies, and a severe struggle ensued. The Celts finally forced their way into Spain, and established themselves there, became more or less amalgamated with the darker occupants, and were called Celt- Iberians. Ever since, these two opposite types have been commingling throughout Western Europe; but a complete fusion has not even yet taken place, and the types of each are still traceable in certain localities.

There was thus an Iberian world before there was a Celtic world. One of the pre-Celtic populations of the British Isles was probably Iberian; and their type, besides leavening indefinitely a portion of the present population, is still distinctly traceable in many of the dark-haired, dark-eyed, and darkskinned Irish, as well as occasionally in Great Britain itself. The Basques, protected by their Pyrenean fastnesses, are a still existent group of nearly pure Iberians; and of their tongue, termed Euskaldune by its speakers, Duponceau long ago said:

-"This language, preserved in a corner of Europe, by a few thousand mountaineers, is the sole remaining fragment of perhaps a hundred dialects, constructed on the same plan, which probably existed and were universally spoken, at a remote period, in that quarter of the world. Like the bones of the mammoth, and the relics of unknown races which have perished, it remains a monument of the destruction brought by a succession of ages. It stands single and alone of its kind, surrounded by idioms whose modern construction bears no analogy to it."

The Bretons form another isolated but less distinct group of still existent Iberians. To this day they present a striking contrast to the population around them, who are of tall stature, with blue eyes, white skins, and blond hair-communicative, impetuous, versatile-passing rapidly from courage to timidity, and from audacity to despair: in other words, they present the distinctive character of the Celtic race, now, as in the ancient Gauls. The Bretons are entirely different. They are taciturn -hold strongly to their ideas and usages-are persevering and of melancholic temperament: in a word, both in morale and physique, they present the type of a southern race. And this brings us to the question, Whence came these Iberians? M. Bodichon, a surgeon distinguished for fifteen years in the French army of Algeria, observes that persons who have lived in Brittany, and then go to Algeria, are struck with the resemblance which they discover between the ancient Armoricans (the Bretons) and the Cabyles of Northern Africa. "In fact, the moral and physical character of the two races is identical. The Breton of pure blood has a bony head, light-yellow complexion of bistre tinge, eyes black or brown, stature short, and the black hair of the Cabyle. Like him, he instinctively hates strangers. In both, the same perverseness and obstinacy, the same endurance of fatigue, same love of independence, same inflexion of voice, same expression of feelings. Listen to a Cabyle speaking his

native tongue, and you will think you hear a Breton talking Celtic." Impressed with this resemblance, M. Bodichon was induced to reflect on the subject, and at last came to the conclusion that the Berbers who primarily peopled Northern Africa, and the dark-skinned Iberians of Western Europe, belonged to the same race. He thinks that, as Europe and Africa were once united at their western extremities, previous to the convulsion which produced the Straits of Gibraltar, this Iberian population passed into Spain by this primeval isthmus, and thence diffused themselves over Western Europe and its isles. Whether this were actually the case, it is hard to say; but it is important to note that Sallust, quoting "the Punic books which were ascribed to King Hiempsal," exactly reverses the course of migration, and states that the progenitors of the African Moors were a people from Media and Persia who had marched through Europe into Spain, and thence into Mauritania-though whether overland by the isthmus, or by boats across the strait, is still left to conjecture. Prichard thinks the Libyans and Iberians were distinct races, but owns that they were found intermingling in the islands and along the western shores of the Mediterranean. Of course it may be taken for granted that among these Iberians, thus spread over Africa, Spain, France, and the British Isles, local differences would exist-just as there is a perceptible difference between the Anglo-Saxons of the Old World and those of the New; but there is reason to believe that the Scoti of Ireland, the Iberians of Spain, and the Berbers of Africa, belonged to a fundamentally identical race.

How any race first came into a country, is a matter of little moment, especially when the epoch of their arrival so far transcends the dawn of history as does that of the Iberians. Even the first wave of the Celtic migration had reached the West before any scrutiny of their progress was possible; for when tradition first dimly opens upon Gaul, about 1500 B. C., its territory was occupied by these two primitive and distinctly

marked Caucasian races-the Celts and Iberians: the one fairskinned and light-haired, the other a dark race; and each speaking a language bearing no affinity to that of the otherprecisely as the Euskaldune of the present Basques is unintelligible to Gaelic tribes of Lower Brittany. Some of the subsequent waves of Celtic or Scythic migration come within the ken of history; and it is remarkable that the line of march which these followed, after passing the shores of the Black Sea, seems to have been along the "Riphæan Valley," which lay to the north of the Carpathian Mountains, and stretched to the Baltic. Now, if we look at the contour map of Europe in Johnston's Physical Atlas, we see a narrow strip of the lowest elevation extending from the Black Sea to the Baltic; and turning to the geological map, we find that this same tract is overlaid with recent diluvial deposits. We know that the Scandinavian region is rising—it is probable that all the plain of Sarmatia has partaken of the elevation; and before the barriers of the Thracian Bosphorus burst, it seems to me certain that the waters of the Caspian, the Euxine, and the Baltic were united by that "ocean-river" of which Homer, Hesiod, and all the old bards sing, and by sailing along which, both the Argonauts and Ulysses are reported to have passed northwards into the western ocean. The existence of this vast belt of water, stretching from the southmost point of the Baltic to the Caucasus, is possibly one reason why the Slavonians were late of appearing in Southern Europe, and why no sprinkling of them or of the Mongols is to be found among the early settlers of South-western Europe. All the early migrations into Europe proceeded from Caucasian or sub-Caucasian regions a circumstance which, considering the known simultaneous existence of roving hordes and a great population on the Mongolian plains, can hardly be accounted for on the supposition that the face of Eastern Europe has since then undergone no change. But on the supposition we make, the chain of the Ural Mountains and this large mediterranean basin would for long act as restraints