Page:Origin of the Anglo-Saxon Race.djvu/142

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
128
Origin of the Anglo-Saxon Race.

name. As applied to natives of Finland it is not a native name. We may, however, look for traces of them in England under the name Cwén or Quén, as well as Fin, as we may of the Wands under their Northern name of Vinthr. If any Fins took part in the colonization of England, it must necessarily have been as members of a body of settlers under another name, probably with Swedes or Danes. As the true Fins have a connection with the Teutons in race, some of them may have been included in the Anglian or Danish hosts, and without the alliance or friendship of these nations, who at different times were masters of the Danish islands, it is not likely that any of them would have left the Baltic. It is in some of those parts of England which were occupied by Danes that traces of Fins, Lechs, and other Eastmen from the Baltic are found, where they may well have settled as Danish allies.

Among European nations generally the skull is orthognathous—i.e., the plane of the face traced downwards forms an angle more or less approaching a right angle with the plane of the base of the skull. Among some of the tribes of Russia, of Ugrian or Mongol descent, prognathous skulls—i.e., with this angle less than a right angle, and consequently with the lower and upper jaw-bones projecting iorwards—may be observed, and to a less extent the same ethnological characteristic is met with among some of the Russian races of mixed descent, whose ancestors presumably were at one time nearer neighbours to the Mongol tribes. This characteristic of prominent jaw-bones is of some importance in considering the evidence of the migration of the Mongols and their admixture with other races, seeing that examples of prognathous skulls have been found in Britain, and a decided tendency to prognathism may still occasionally be observed in individuals of NorthernEuropean races.

The Esthonians of the Baltic coast south of the Gulf of