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         THE
      ETHNOLOGY
          OF
 THE BRITISH ISLANDS.




                               THE
                            ETHNOLOGY
                                OF
                       THE BRITISH ISLANDS.

                                BY
                   R. G. LATHAM, M.D., F.R.S.,
 CORRESPONDING MEMBER TO THE ETHNOLOGICAL SOCIETY, NEW YORK, ETC.

                             [Device]

                             LONDON:
                JOHN VAN VOORST, PATERNOSTER ROW.

                            MDCCCLII.




                 LONDON:
 PRINTED BY T. E. METCALF, 63, SNOW HILL.




CONTENTS.


                             CHAPTER I.
                                                                    PAGE
 Preliminary Remarks.--Present Populations of the British Isles.--
 Romans, &c.--Pre-historic Period.--The Irish Elk.--How far
 Contemporaneous with Man.--Stone Period.--Modes of Sepulture.--
 The Physical Condition of the Soil.--Its Fauna.--Skulls of the
 Stone Period.--The Bronze Period.--Gold Ornaments.--Alloys and
 Castings.--How far Native or Foreign.--Effect of the Introduction
 of Metals.--Dwellings.                                                1


                             CHAPTER II.

 Authorities for the Earliest Historical Period.--Herodotus.--
 Aristotle.--Polybius.--Onomacritus.--Diodorus Siculus.--Strabo.--
 Festus Avienus.--Ultimate sources.--Damnonii.--Ph[oe]nician
 Trade.--The Orgies.--South-Eastern Britons of Caesar.--The Details
 of his Attacks.--The Caledonians of Galgacus.                        38


                             CHAPTER III.

 Origin of the Britons.--Kelts of Gaul.--The Belgae.--Whether
 Keltic or German.--Evidence of Caesar.--Attrebates, Belgae, Remi,
 Durotriges and Morini, Chauci and Menapii.                           58


                             CHAPTER IV.

 The Picts.--List of Kings.--Penn Fahel.--Aber and Inver.--The
 Picts probably, but not certainly, Britons.                          76


                             CHAPTER V.

 Origin of the Gaels.--Difficulties of its Investigation.--Not
 Elucidated by any Records, nor yet by Traditions.--Arguments from
 the Difference between the British and Gaelic Languages.--The
 British Language spoken in Gaul.--The Gaelic not known to be
 spoken in any part of the Continent.--Lhuyd's Doctrine.--The
 Hibernian Hypothesis.--The Caledonian Hypothesis.--Postulates.       83


                             CHAPTER VI.

 Roman Influences.--Agricola.--The Walls and Ramparts of Adrian,
 Antoninus, and Severus.--Bonosus.--Carausius.--The Constantian
 Family.--Franks and Alemanni in Britain.--Foreign Elements in the
 Roman Legions.                                                       90


                             CHAPTER VII.

 Value of the Early British Records.--True and Genuine Traditions
 Rare.--Gildas.--Beda.--Nennius.--Annales Cambrenses.--Difference
 between Chronicles and Registers.--Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.--Irish
 Annals.--Value of the Accounts of the Fifth and Sixth
 Centuries.--Questions to which they apply.                          104


                             CHAPTER VIII.

 The Angles of Germany: their comparative obscurity.--Notice of
 Tacitus.--Extract from Ptolemy.--Conditions of the Angle Area.--
 The Varini.--The Reudigni and other Populations of Tacitus.--The
 Sabalingii, &c., of Ptolemy.--The Suevi Angili.--Engle and
 Ongle.--Original Angle Area.                                        142


                             CHAPTER IX.

 The Saxons--of Upper Saxony--of Lower, or Old Saxony.--
 Nordalbingians.--Saxons of Ptolemy.--Present and Ancient
 Populations of Sleswick-Holstein.--North-Frisians.--Probable
 Origin of the name Saxon.--The Littus Saxonicum.--Saxones
 Bajocassini.                                                        165


                             CHAPTER X.

 The Angles of Germany--Imperfect Reconstruction of their
 History--Their Heroic Age.--Beowulf.--Conquest of Anglen.--
 Anecdote from Procopius.--Their Reduction under the Carlovingian
 Dynasty.--The Angles of Thuringia.                                  200


                             CHAPTER XI.

 Recapitulations and Illustrations.--Propositions respecting the
 Keltic Character of the Original Occupants of Britain, &c.--The
 Relations between the Ancient Britons and the Ancient Gauls,
 &c.--The Scotch Gaels.--The Picts.--The Date of the Germanic
 Invasions.--The names Angle and Saxon.                              219


                             CHAPTER XII.

 Analysis of the Germanic Populations of England.--The Jute
 Element Questionable.--Frisian Elements Probable.--Other German
 Elements, how far Probable.--Forms in -ing.                         232


                             CHAPTER XIII.

 The Scandinavians.--Forms in -by: their Import and
 Distribution.--Danes of Lincolnshire, &c.; of East Anglia; of
 Scotland; of the Isle of Man; of Lancashire and Cheshire; of
 Pembrokeshire.--Norwegians of Northumberland, Scotland, and
 Ireland, and Isle of Man.--Frisian forms in Yorkshire.--Bogy.--
 Old Scratch.--The Picts possibly Scandinavian.--The Normans.        244




      ETHNOLOGY
         OF
 THE BRITISH ISLANDS.




CHAPTER I.

    PRELIMINARY REMARKS.--PRESENT POPULATIONS OF THE BRITISH
    ISLES.--ROMANS, ETC.--PRE-HISTORIC PERIOD.--THE IRISH ELK.--HOW FAR
    CONTEMPORANEOUS WITH MAN.--STONE PERIOD.--MODES OF SEPULTURE.--THE
    PHYSICAL CONDITION OF THE SOIL--ITS FAUNA.--SKULLS OF THE STONE
    PERIOD.--THE BRONZE PERIOD.--GOLD ORNAMENTS.--ALLOYS AND
    CASTINGS.--HOW FAR NATIVE OR FOREIGN.--EFFECT OF THE INTRODUCTION OF
    METALS.--DWELLINGS.


The ethnologist, who passes from the history of the varieties of the
human species of the world at large, to the details of some special
family, tribe, or nation, is in the position of the naturalist who rises
from such a work as the _Systema Naturae_, or the _Regne Animal_, to
concentrate his attention on some special section or subsection of the
sciences of Zoology and Botany. If having done this he should betake
himself to some ponderous folio, bulkier than the one which he read
last, but devoted to a subject so specific and limited as to have
scarcely found a place in the general history of organized beings, the
comparison is all the closer. The subject, in its main characteristics,
is the same in both cases; but the difference of the details is
considerable. A topographical map on the scale of a chart of the world,
a manipulation for the microscope as compared with the preparation of a
wax model, are but types and illustrations of the contrast. A small
field requires working after a fashion impossible for a wide farm; often
with different implements, and often with different objects. A
dissertation upon the <DW64>s of Africa, and a dissertation upon the
Britons of the Welsh Principality, though both ethnological, have but
few questions in common, at least in the present state of our knowledge;
and out of a hundred pages devoted to each, scarcely ten would embody
the same sort of facts. With the <DW64>, we should search amongst old
travellers and modern missionaries for such exact statements as we might
be fortunate enough to find respecting his geographical position, the
texture of his hair, the shade of his skin, the peculiarities of his
creed, the structure of his language; and well satisfied should we be if
anything at once new and true fell in our way. But in the case of the
Briton all this is already known to the inquirer, and can be conveyed in
a few sentences to the reader. What then remains? A fresh series of
researches, which our very superiority of knowledge has developed;
inquiries which, with an imperfectly known population, would be
impossible. Who speculates to any extent upon such questions as the
degrees of intermixture between the Moors and the true <DW64>s of Nubia?
Who grapples with such a problem as the date of the occupation of New
Guinea? Such and such-like points are avoided; simply because the _data_
for working them are wanting. Yet with an area like the British Isles,
they are both possible and pertinent. More than this. In such countries
there must either be no ethnology at all, or it must be of the minute
kind, since the primary and fundamental questions, which constitute
nine-tenths of our inquiries elsewhere, are already answered.

Minute ethnology must be more or less speculative--the less the better.
It must be so, however, to some extent, because it attempts new
problems. Critical too it must be--the more the better. It often works
with unfamiliar instruments, whose manipulation must be explained, and
whose power tested. Again, although the field in which it works be wide,
the tract in which it moves may be beaten. An outlying question may have
been treated by many investigators, and the results may be extremely
different. In British ethnology, the history of opinions only, if given
with the due amount of criticism, would fill more than one volume larger
than the present.

The above has been written to shew that any work upon such a subject as
the present must partake, to a great degree, of the nature of a
disquisition: perhaps indeed, the term _controversy_ would not be too
strong. The undeniable and recognized results of previous investigators
are truisms. That the Britons and Gaels are Kelts, and that the English
are Germans is known wherever Welsh dissent, Irish poverty, or English
misgovernment are the subjects of notice. What such Kelticism or
Germanism may have to do with these same characteristics is neither so
well ascertained, nor yet so easy to discover. On the contrary, there is
much upon these points which may be well _un_-learnt. Kelts, perchance,
may not be so very Keltic, or Germans so very German as is believed; for
it may be that a very slight preponderance of the Keltic elements over
the German, or of the German over the Keltic may have determined the use
of the terms. Such a point as this is surely worth raising; yet it
cannot be answered off-hand. At present, however, it is mentioned as a
sample of minute ethnology, and as a warning of the disquisitional
character which the forthcoming pages, in strict pursuance to the nature
of the subject, must be expected to exhibit.

The extent, then, to which the two stocks that occupy the British Isles
are pure or mixed; the characteristics of each stock in its purest form;
and the effects of intermixture where it has taken place, are some of
our problems; and if they could each and all be satisfactorily answered,
we should have a Natural History of our Civilization. But the answers
are not satisfactory; at any rate they are not conclusive. Nevertheless,
a partial solution can be obtained; a partial solution which is
certainly worth some efforts on the part of both the reader and the
writer. Other questions, too, curious rather than of practical value,
constitute the department of minute ethnology; especially when the area
under notice is an island. The _date_ of its occupancy, although
impossible as an absolute epoch, can still be brought within certain
limits. Whether, however, such limits would not be too wide for any one
but a geologist, is another question.

Now, if I have succeeded in shewing that criticism and disquisition must
necessarily form a large part of such an ethnology as the one before us,
I have given a reason for what may, perhaps, seem an apparent
irregularity in the arrangement of the different parts of the subject.
With the civil historian, the earliest events come first; for, in
following causes to their consequences, he begins with the oldest. The
ethnologist, on the other hand, whenever--as is rarely the case--he can
lay before the reader the whole process and all the steps of his
investigations, reverses this method, and begins with the times in which
he lives; so that by a long series of inferences from effect to cause,
he concludes--so to say--at the beginning; inasmuch as it is his special
business to argue backwards or upwards. Yet the facts of the present
volume will follow neither of these arrangements exactly; though, of
course, the order of them will be, in the main, chronological. They will
be taken, in many cases, as they are wanted for the purposes of the
argument; so that if a fact of the tenth century be necessary for the
full understanding of one of the fifth, it will be taken out of its due
order. Occasional transpositions of this kind are to be found in all
works wherein the investigation of doubtful points preponderates over
the illustration of admitted facts, or in all works where discussion
outweighs exposition.

The period when the British Isles were occupied by Kelts only (or, at
least, supposed to have been so) will form the subject of the earlier
chapters. The facts will, of course, be given as I have been able to
find them; but it may be not unnecessary to state beforehand the nature
of the principal questions upon which they will bear.

The date of the first occupancy of the British Isles by man is one of
them. It can (as already stated) only be brought within certain
wide--very wide--limits; and that hypothetically, or subject to the
accuracy of several preliminary facts.

The division of mankind to which the earliest occupants belonged is the
next; and it is closely connected with the first. If the Kelts were the
earliest occupants of Britain, we can tell within a few thousand years
when they arrived. But what if there were an occupation of Britain
anterior to theirs?

The civilization of the earliest occupants is a question inextricably
interwoven with the other two; since the rate at which it advanced--if
it advanced at all--must depend upon the duration of the occupancy, and
the extent to which it was the occupancy of one, or more than one,
section of mankind. But foreign intercourse may have accelerated this
rate, or a foreign civilization may have altogether replaced that of the
_indigenae_. The evidence of this is a fourth question.

So interwoven with each other are all these questions, that, although
the facts of the first three chapters will be arranged with the special
view to their elucidation, no statement of the results will be given
until the invasion of the Anglo-Saxons, or the introduction of the great
Germanic elements of the British nation, leads us from the field of
early Keltic to that of early Teutonic research; and that will not be
until the details of the Britons as opposed to the Gaels, of the Gaels
as opposed to the Britons, and of the Picts (as far as they can be made
out) have been disposed of.

One of the populations of the British Isles, at the present moment,
speaks a language belonging to the Keltic, the other one belonging to
the Teutonic class of tongues. However, it is by no means certain that
the blood, pedigree, race, descent, or extraction coincides with the
form of speech: indeed it is certain that it does so but partially.
Though few individuals of Teutonic extraction speak any of the Keltic
dialects as their mother-tongue, the converse is exceedingly common; and
numerous Kelts know no other language but the English. Speech, then, is
only _prima facie_ evidence of descent; nevertheless, it is the most
convenient criterion we have.

The Keltic class falls into divisions and subdivisions. The oldest and
purest portion of the Gaelic Kelts is to be found in Ireland, especially
on the western coast. Situated as Connaught is on the Atlantic, it lies
beyond the influx of any new blood, except from the east and north; yet
from the east and north the introduction of fresh populations has been
but slight. Here, then, we find the Irish Gael in his most typical form.

Scotland, like Ireland, is _Gaelic_ in respect to its Keltic
population, but the stock is less pure. However slight may be the
admixture of English blood in the Highlands and the Western Isles, the
infusion of Scandinavian is very considerable. Caithness has numerous
geographical terms whose meaning is to be found in the Danish, Swedish,
Norwegian, and Icelandic. _Sutherland_ shews its political relations by
its name. It is the _Southern Land_; an impossible name if the county be
considered English (for it lies in the very _north_ of the island), but
a natural name if we refer it to Norway, of which Sutherland was, at one
time, a southern dependency, or (if not a dependency), a robbing-ground.
Orkney and Shetland were once as thoroughly Norse as the Faroe Isles or
Iceland.

The third variety of the present British population is in the Isle of
Man, where a language sufficiently like the Gaelic of Ireland and
Scotland to be placed in the same division, is still spoken. Yet the
blood is mixed. The Norsemen preponderated in Man; and the constitution
of the island is in many parts Scandinavian, though the language be
Keltic.

In Wales the language and population are still Keltic, though
sufficiently different from the Scotch, Irish, and Manx, to be
considered as a separate branch of that stock. It is conveniently called
_British_, _Cambrian_, and _Cambro-Briton_. It is quite unintelligible
to any Gael. Neither can any Gael, talking Gaelic, make himself
understood by a Briton. On the other hand, however, a Scotch and an
Irish Gael understand each other; whilst, with some effort, they
understand a Manxman, and _vice versa_. So that the number of mutually
unintelligible languages of the Keltic stock is two; in other words, the
Keltic dialects of the British Isles are referable to two branches--the
British for the Welsh, and the Gaelic for the Scotch, Irish, and Manx.
The other language of the British Isles is the English, one upon which
it is unnecessary to enlarge; but which makes the third tongue in actual
existence at the present moment, if we count the Irish, Scotch, and Manx
as dialects of the same language, and the fifth if we separate them.

By raising the Lowland Scotch to the rank of a separate language, we may
increase our varieties; but, as it is only a general view which we are
taking at present, it is as well not to multiply distinctions. I believe
that, notwithstanding some strong assertions to the contrary, there are
no two dialects of the English tongue--whether spoken east or west--in
North Britain or to the South of the Tweed--that are not mutually
intelligible, when used as it is the usual practice to use them. That
strange sentences may be made by picking out strange provincialisms,
and stringing them together in a manner that never occurs in common
parlance, is likely enough; but that any two men speaking English shall
be in the same position to each other as an Englishman is to a Dutchman
or Dane, so that one shall not know what the other says, is what I am
wholly unprepared to believe, both from what I have observed in the
practice of provincial speech, and what I have read in the way of
provincial glossaries.

The populations, however, just enumerated, represent but a fraction of
our ethnological varieties. They only give us those of the nineteenth
century. Other sections have become extinct, or, if not, have lost their
distinctive characteristics, which is much the same as dying out
altogether. The ethnology of these populations is a matter of history.
Beginning with those that have most recently been assimilated to the
great body of Englishmen, we have--

1. The Cornishmen of Cornwall.--They are Britons in blood, and until the
seventeenth century, were Britons in language also. When the Cornish
language ceased to be spoken it was still intelligible to a Welshman;
yet in the reign of Henry II., although intelligible, it was still
different. Giraldus Cambrensis especially states that the "Cornubians
and Armoricans used a language almost identical; a language which the
Welsh, from origin and intercourse, understood in _many_ things, and
_almost_ in all."

2. The Cumbrians, of Cumberland, retained the British language till
after the Conquest. This was, probably, spoken as far north as the
Clyde. Earlier, however, than either of these were--

3. The Picts.--The Cumbrian and Cornish Britons were simply members of
the same division with the Welshmen, Welshmen, so to say, when the Welsh
area extended south of the Bristol Channel and north of the Mersey. The
Picts were, probably, in a different category. They may indeed have been
Gaels. They have formed a separate substantive division of Kelts. They
may have been no Kelts at all, but Germans or Scandinavians.

But populations neither Keltic nor Teutonic have, at different times,
settled in England; populations which (like several branches of the
Keltic stock) have either lost their distinctive characteristics, or
become mixed in blood, but which (unlike such Kelts) were not indigenous
to any of the islands. Like the Germans or Teutons, on the other hand,
they were foreigners; but, unlike the Germans or Teutons, they have not
preserved their separate substantive character. Still, some of their
blood runs in both English and Keltic veins; some of their language has
mixed itself with both tongues; and some of their customs have either
corrupted or improved our national character. Thus--

1. The battle of Hastings filled England with Normans, French in
language, French and Scandinavian in blood, but (eventually) English in
the majority of their matrimonial alliances. And before the Normans
came--

2. The Danes--and before the Danes--

3. The Romans.--Such is the general view of the chief populations, past
and present, of England; of which, however, the Keltic and the Angle are
the chief.

The English-and-Scotch, the Normans, the Danes, and the Romans have all
been introduced upon the island within the Historical period--some
earlier than others, but all within the last 2,000 years, so that we
have a fair amount of information as to their history; not so much,
perhaps, as is generally believed, but still a fair amount. We know
within a few degrees of latitude and longitude where they came from; and
we know their ethnological relations to the occupants of the parts
around them.

With the Kelts this is not the case. Of Gael or Manxman, Briton or Pict,
we know next to nothing during their early history. We can guess where
they came from, and we can infer their ethnological relations; but
history, in the strict sense of the term, we have none; for the Keltic
period differs from that of all the others in being pre-historic. This
is but another way of saying that the Keltic populations, and those
only, are the aborigines of the island; or, if not aboriginal, the
earliest known. Yet it is possible that these same Keltic populations,
whose numerous tribes and clans and nations covered both the British and
the Hibernian Isles for generations and generations before the discovery
of the art of writing, or the existence of a historical record, may be
as well understood as their invaders; since ethnology infers where
history is silent, and history, even when speaking, may be indistinct.
At any rate, the previous notice of the ethnology of the British Isles
during the Historical period, prepares us with a little light for the
dark walk in the field of its earliest antiquity.

Nothing, as has just been stated, in the earliest historical records of
Britain, throws any light upon the original occupation of the British
Islands by man; indeed, nothing tells us that Britain, when so occupied,
was an island at all. The Straits of Dover may have existed when the
first human being set foot upon what is now the soil of Kent, or an
isthmus may have existed instead. Whether then it was by land, or
whether it was by water, that the population of Europe propagated itself
into England, is far beyond the evidence of any historical memorial--far
beyond the evidence of tradition. Nothing at present indicates the
nature of the primary migration of our earliest ancestors. Neither does
any historical record tell us what manner of men first established
themselves along the valleys of the Thames and Trent, or cleared the
forests along their watersheds. They may have been as much ruder than
the rudest of the tribes seen by Paulinus and Agricola, as those tribes
were ruder than ourselves. They may, on the other hand, have enjoyed a
higher civilization, a civilization which Caesar saw in its later stages
only; one which Gallic wars, and other evil influences, may have
impaired.

For the consideration of such questions as these it matters but little
whether we begin with the information which the ambition of Caesar gave
the Romans the opportunity of acquiring, or such accounts of the
Ph[oe]nician traders as found their way into the writings of the Greeks;
Polybius (for instance), Aristotle, or Herodotus. A few centuries, more
or less, are of trifling importance. The social condition in both cases
is the same. There was tin in Cornwall, and iron swords in Kent; in
other words, there was the civilization of men who knew the use of
metals, both on the side of the soldiers who followed Cassibelaunus to
fight against Caesar, and amongst the miners and traders of the
Land's-end. In both cases, too, there was foreign intercourse; with
Gaul, where there was a tincture of Roman, and with Spain, where there
was a tincture of Ph[oe]nician, civilization. This is not the infancy of
our species, nor yet that of any of its divisions. For this we must go
backwards, and farther back still, from the domain of testimony to that
of inference, admitting a pre-historic period, with its own proper and
peculiar methods of investigation--methods that the ethnologist shares
with the geologist and naturalist, rather than with the civil historian.
In respect to their results, they may be barren or they may be fertile;
but, whether barren or whether fertile, the practice and application of
them is a healthy intellectual exercise.

It must not be thought that the use of metals, and the contact with the
Continent, which have just been noticed, invalidate the statement as to
the insufficiency of our earliest historical notices. It must not be
thought that they tell us more than they really do. It is only at the
first view that the knowledge of certain metallurgic processes, and the
trade and power that such knowledge developes, are presumptions in
favour of a certain degree of antiquity in the occupancy of our island
on the parts of its islanders; and it is only by forgetting the
_insular_ character of Great Britain that we can allow ourselves to
suppose that, though our early arts tell us nothing about our first
introduction, they at any rate prove that it was _no recent event_.
"Time," we may fairly say, "must be allowed for such habits as are
implied by the use of metals to have developed themselves, and,
consequently, generations, centuries, and possibly even millenniums must
have elapsed between the landing of the first vessel of the first
Britons, and the beginning of the trade with the Kassiterides." As a
general rule, such reasoning is valid; yet the earliest known phenomena
of British civilization are compatible with a comparatively modern
introduction of its population. For Great Britain may have been peopled
like Iceland or Madeira, _i.e._, not a generation or two after the
peopling of the nearest parts of the opposite Continent, but many ages
later; in which case both the population and its civilization may be but
things of yesterday. In the twelfth century, Iceland had an alphabet and
the art of writing. Had these grown up within the island itself, the
inference would be that its population was of great antiquity; since
time must be allowed for their evolution--even as time must be allowed
for the growth of acorns on an oak. But the art may be newer than the
population, or the population and the art may be alike recent. Hence, as
the civilization of the earliest Britons may be newer than the stock to
which it belonged, the testimony of ancient writers to its existence is
anything but conclusive against the late origin of the stock itself. It
is best to admit an absolutely pre-historic period, and that without
reservation; and as a corollary, to allow that it may have differed in
kind as well as degree from the historic.

There is another fact that should be noticed. The languages of Great
Britain are reducible to two divisions, both of which agree in many
essential points with certain languages or dialects of Continental
Europe. The British was closely, the Gaelic more distantly, allied to
the ancient tongue of the Gauls. From this affinity we get an argument
_against_ any extreme antiquity of the Britons of the British Isles. The
date of their separation from the tribes of the Continent was not so
remote as to obliterate and annihilate all traces of the original
mother-tongue. It was not long enough for the usual processes by which
languages are changed, to eject from even the Irish Gaelic (the most
unlike of the two) every word and inflection which the progenitors of
the present Irish brought from Gaul, and to replace them by others. So
that, at the first view, we have a limit in this direction; yet unless
we have settled certain preliminaries, the limit is unreal. All that it
gives us is the comparatively recent introduction of the _Keltic_ stock.
Varieties of the human species, _other than Keltic_, may have existed
at an indefinitely early period, and subsequently have been superseded
by the Kelts. Philology, then, tells us little more than history; and it
may not be superfluous to add, that the occupancy of Great Britain by a
stock of the kind in question, earlier than the Keltic, and different
from it, is no imaginary case of the author's, but a doctrine which has
taken the definite form of a recognized hypothesis, and characterizes
one of the best ethnological schools of the Continent--the Scandinavian.

For the ambitious attempt at a reconstruction of the earliest state of
the human kind in Britain, we may prepare ourselves by a double series
of processes. Having taken society as it exists at the present moment,
we eject those elements of civilization which have brought it to its
present condition, beginning with the latest first. We then take up a
smaller question, and consider what arts and what forms of
knowledge--what conditions of society--existing amongst the earlier
populations have been lost or superseded with ourselves. The result is
an approximation to the state of things in the infancy of our species.
We subtract (for instance) from the sum of our present means and
appliances such elements as the knowledge of the power of steam, the art
of printing, and gunpowder; all which we can do under the full light of
history. Stripped of these, society takes a ruder shape. But it is
still not rude enough to be primitive. There are parts of the earth's
surface, at the present moment, where the metals are unknown. There was,
probably, a time when they were known nowhere. Hence, the influences of
such a knowledge as this must be subtracted. And then come weaving and
pottery, the ruder forms of domestic architecture, and boat-building,
lime-burning, dyeing, tanning, and the fermentation of liquors. When and
where were such arts as these wanting to communities? No man can answer
this; yet our methods of investigation require that the question should
be raised.

Other questions, too, which cannot be answered must be suggested, since
they serve to exhibit the trains of reasoning that depend upon them. Was
Britain (a question already indicated) cut off from Gaul by the Straits
of Dover when it was first peopled? If it were, the civilization
required for the building of a boat must have been one of the attributes
of the first aborigines; so that, whatever else in the way of
civilization may have been evolved on British ground, the art of
hollowing a tree, and launching it on the waves was foreign.

Now it is safe to say