WELSH NATIONAL SOCIETY. Address by Professor Boyd Dawkins.

Te Aroha News, Volume VI, Issue 340, 6 February 1889, Page 3

WELSH NATIONAL SOCIETY. Address by Professor Boyd Dawkins.

At the inaugural meeting of the fourth session of the Liverpool Welsh National Society held in the Royal Institution, Colquittstreot, Professor Boyd Dawkins, M.A,» F.JR.S., of Owen's College, Manchester, delivered the inaugural address, under the title of ' Our AncestorsProfessor Boyd Dawkins said it was most desirable, under the present condition of affair?, that they should form some definite ideas as to who their ancestors wero. By that, of course, ho meant the ancestors of Welshmen. (Applause.) In travelling through Walop, they would find there were two distinct types of people to be met with and studied - namely, a small dark people, w ibh black hair, black eyes, and small, well knit figures ; and a bigger, stouter, and fairer type of man. The smaller people had aquiline notes, high foreheads, oval cyea, and great length of head from the forehead towards tho back of the hoad ; they were lithe and active, being in e\ery respect like the small, dark people still to be found in parts of France, Spain, Ireland, and certain parts of the Scottish Highlands, where they were called the small, daik Highlanders. The other type of Welshman was equaiely set, with fair or sandy hair, fair complexion, and was stouter than the small type. The story of the coming of the Welsh into Wales was really the story of their ancestors coming into Europe ; it was part of the larger story winch involved the main points of the civilisation of Europe. The story lay in part on the border-lands of history, and some of it lay far away beyond that in the prehistoric periods of which the only records they had were found in the tombs and caves and those wonderful discoveries which had bcJsn brought to light by the pickaxo and tho shovel during tho last twentyfive years. The dark, small people who weie now scattered over Wales, Ireland, Scotland, and the West of Europe were at one timo homogeneous, when, of course, they exercised a far greater importance than when they were scattered into isolated fragments. At the very beginning ot history, the small, dark people occupied a vast portion of France and the whole of Spain. In the neolithic, or polished stone, age, they occupied also the British Isles, and it was to the small, dark race that we owed all our domestic animals — dogs, shorthorned oxen, and species of goats and pigs. To them, also, we owed the arts of husbandry and all the pastoral arts ; not only husbandry, but spinning, weaving, and pottery-making. And they were the cause of the very existence of Liverpool, having introduced navigation. (Applause.) When the "Romans conquered Gaul, they found the Celts in occupation of the whole of Gaul and the Mediterranean seaboard. The small, dark people were gradually crushed out, and iheir tongue now was entirely represented by certain Basque dialects, which were rapidly dying out. The small race were non- Aryan, and when the Continent was invaded by the Aryans, tho small people were gradually pushed back, and ao present there was non a single word in the Welsh language showing any trace of the old tongue. The professor then gave an exhaustive history of the Welsh down to the present time, and concluded by saying that, as a part of the British peoplo, they were better off and enjoyed greater advantages than if they wero a separate people in their own native hills. (Applause.)