Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 52.djvu/167

Rh are nevertheless agreed that the round-barrow men came from the continent somewhere. Any other derivation would have been an impossibility. We also know that this Alpine immigrant type overran all England and part of Scotland. It never reached Ireland because of its remoteness; with the result that greater homogeneity of type prevails therein, while at the same time the island was deprived of a powerful stimulus to advance in culture. This is the first indication of the geographical handicap under which Erin has always labored. Finally, we have to note that this broad-headed invasion of the round-barrow period is the only case where such an ethnic element ever crossed the English Channel in numbers sufficient to affect the physical type of the aborigines. Even here its influence was but transitory; the energy of the invasion speedily dissipated; for at the opening of the historic period, judged by the sepulchral remains, the earlier types had considerably absorbed the newcomers.

The disappearance of the round-barrow men is the last event of the prehistoric period which we are able to distinguish. Coming, therefore, to the time of recorded history, we find that every influence was directed toward the complete submergence of this extraneous broad-headed type; for a great immigration from the northern mainland set in, which, after six hundred years of almost uninterrupted flow, completely changed the complexion—we speak literally as well as figuratively—of these islands. The Teutonic invasions from Germany, Denmark, and Scandinavia are the final episodes in our chronicle. They bring us down to the present time. They offer us a brilliant example of a great ethnic conquest as well as of a military or political occupation. The Romans came in considerable numbers; they walled cities and built roads; they introduced new arts and customs; but when they abandoned the islands they left them racially as they were before; for they appear to have formed a ruling caste, holding itself aloof in the main from intermarriage with the natives.

Not even a heritage of Latin place names remains to any considerable degree. Kent and Essex were of all the counties perhaps the most thoroughly Romanized; and yet the names of towns, rivers,