23 AUGUST 1930, Page 15

* * * * This talk of the Cotswold villagers

was reported to a pro- fessor of anthropology and kindred subjects, who had been long especially interested in the Down folk of Berkshire and other counties. He strongly supported the villagers. In his view the racial differences between the hill and the valley people are still easily distinguishable, in spite of the influence of modern transport. You still find in the upland villages the type that, for want of a better word, is popularly called Celtic ; and doubtless differences in habits and ways of thought and practice remain in association with the facial, and cranial differences. The hill folk and the valley folk have not lost the distinctions that kept them apart and hostile two and three thousand years ago. How W. H. Hudson (who had a peculiar interest in the Iberian type of country folk in the Home Counties) would have enjoyed this Cotswold symposium