One of the most misleading of words is that of “aborigines.”  Its use dates from the time when the cosmogony was thought to be young and life to be of very recent appearance.  Its usual meaning seems to be derived from the supposition that nations disseminated themselves like colonists from a common centre about four thousand years, say 120 generations ago, and thenceforward occupied their lands undisturbed until the very recent historic period with which the narrator deals, when some invading host drove out the “aborigines.”  This idyllic view of the march of events is contradicted by ancient sepulchral remains, by language, and by the habits of those modern barbarians whose history we know.  There are probably hardly any spots on the earth that have not, within the last few thousand years, been tenanted by very different races; none hardly that have not been tenanted by very different tribes having the character of at least sub-races.

The absence of a criterion to distinguish between races and sub-races, and our ethnological ignorance generally, makes it impossible to offer more than a very off-hand estimate of the average variety of races in the different countries of the world.  I have, however, endeavoured to form one, which I give with much hesitation, knowing how very little it is worth.  I registered the usually recognised races inhabiting each of upwards of twenty countries, and who at the same time formed at least half per cent of the population.  It was, I am perfectly aware, a very rough proceeding, so rough that for the United Kingdom I ignored the prehistoric types and accepted only the three headings of British, Low Dutch, and Norman-French.  Again, as regards India I registered as follows:—­Forest tribes (numerous), Dravidian (three principal divisions), Early Arian, Tartar (numerous, including Afghans), Arab, and lastly European, on account of their political importance, notwithstanding the fewness of their numbers.  Proceeding in this off-hand way, and after considering the results, the broad conclusion to which I arrived was that on the average at least three different recognised races were to be found in every moderately-sized district on the earth’s surface.  The materials were far too scanty to enable any idea to be formed of the rate of change in the relative numbers of the constituent races in each country, and still less to estimate the secular changes of type in those races.

It may be well to take one or two examples of intermixture.  Spain was occupied in the earliest historic times by at least two races, of whom we know very little; it was afterwards colonised here and there by Phoenicians in its southern ports, and by Greeks in its eastern.  In the third century B.C. it was invaded by the Carthaginians, who conquered and held a large part of it, but were afterwards supplanted by the Romans, who ruled it more or less completely for 700 years.  It was invaded in the fifth century A.D. by a succession of German