taken up. "We have," he said, "as good evidence as can possibly be obtained on such subjects that the same elements have entered into the composition of the population in England, Scotland and Ireland; and that the ethnic differences between the three lie simply in the general and local proportions of these elements in each region. . . . The population of Cornwall and Devon has as much claim to the title of Celtic as that of Tipperary. . . . Undoubtedly there are four geographical regions, England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland, and the people who live in them call themselves and are called by others the English, Scotch, Welsh and Irish nations. It is also true that the inhabitants of the Isle of Man call themselves Manxmen, and are just as proud of their nationality as any other 'nationalities.'
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"But if we mean no more than this by 'nationality,' the term has no practical significance" ('The Races of the British Isles,' pp. 44, 45).
Surely it would be very desirable, especially when political arguments are based on the term, that we should come to some understanding as to what is meant by the word 'nation.' The English, Scotch and Irish live under one Flag, one Queen and one Parliament. If they are not one nation, what are they? What term are we to use, and some term is obviously required, to express and combine all three. For my part I submit that the correct terminology is to speak of Celtic race or Teutonic race, of the Irish people or the Scotch people; but that the people of England, Scotland and Ireland, aye, and of the Colonies also, constitute one great nation.
As regards the races which have combined to form the nation, Huxley's view was that in Roman times the population of Britain comprised people of two types, the one fair, the other dark. The dark people resembled the Aquitani and the Iberians; the fair people were like the Belgic Gauls ('Essays,' V., vii., p. 254). And he adds that "the only constituent stocks of that population, now, or at any other period about which we have evidence, are the dark whites, whom I have proposed to call 'Melanochroi,' and the fair whites or 'Xanthochroi.'"
He concludes (1) "That the Melanochroi and the Xanthochroi are two separate races in the biological sense of the word race; (2) that they have had the same general distribution as at present from the earliest times of which any record exists on the continent of Europe; (3) that the population of the British Islands is derived from them, and from them only."
It will, however, be observed that we have (1) a dark race and a fair race; (2) a large race and a small race; and (3) a round-headed race and a long-headed race. But some of the fair race were large, some small; some have round heads, some long heads; some of the dark race again had long heads, some round ones. In fact, the question seems to me
