me 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 m