We are still further assured of the truth of these geographical generalizations on comparison of the racial history of England with that of Ireland; for we thereby have opportunity to observe the effects of different degrees of such insularity. In the latter case, it
An Irish Type. Gray eyes, brown hair. Arran Islands, Galway.
has become a bit too pronounced to be a favorable element in the situation. Disregarding her modern political history—for we are dealing with races and not nations—it is indeed true, as Dr. Beddoe says, that Ireland "has always been a little behindhand." Ethnic invasions, if they took place at all, came late and with spent energy; most of them, as we shall see, whether of culture or of physical types, failed to reach her shores at all. These laws apply to all forms of life alike. Thus the same geographical isolation which excluded the
only been opened to us, a large part of it has even been subjected to the perils of transportation to America for our benefit. From these two sources all of our portraits are derived. Authorities comprehensively treating the anthropology of the British Isles are very few. Pre-eminent is Dr. John Beddoe's Races of Britain, Bristol and London, 1885; and his Stature and Bulk of Man in the British Isles, in Memoirs of the Anthropological Society of London, iii, 1870. A full list of a score or more of his scattered papers will be found in our Bibliography of the Anthropology of Europe, now in preparation, to appear in Bulletins of the Boston Public Library. The monumental work of Davis and Thurnam, Crania Britannica, two volumes, London, 1865, covers the whole subject of past and present populations. An essay, On Some Fixed Points in British Ethnology, by the late T. H. Huxley, in the Contemporary Review for 1871, is a convenient summary, with no attention to the evidence of craniology, however. Finally, the reports of the Anthropometric Committee of the British Association for Advancement of Science, especially its last one in 1883, should not be omitted. Many other papers of local importance are named in our Bibliography above mentioned.
