Abstract
THE English people of the present day present two types of physical structure, which are extremely different in their most marked forms, though they pass into one another by every shade of gradation. The one type is tall, fair-complexioned, yellow or red haired, and blue-eyed; the other, short, dark-complexioned, black-haired, and black-eyed. The two types and their intermediate gradations are, at present, to be found side by side in most parts of the British Islands; but there is a marked predominance of the fair type in the eastern half of Britain. The languages spoken by the English people have, at the present time, no relation to these two physical types; English speakers and Celtic speakers belonging no less to the one type than to the other. Nor are the two Celtic dialects, Cymric and Gaelic, confined to people of the one or the other physical type, as both the types described are exhibited in their extreme forms among Welshmen, Highlanders, and Irishmen.
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HUXLEY, T. The Forefathers of the English People * . Nature 1, 514–515 (1870). https://doi.org/10.1038/001514a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/001514a0