23 JUNE 1923, Page 20

The Races of England and Wales. By H. J. Fleure.

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Professor Fleure's brief sketch of a large subject is worth reading because it is refreshingly free from dogmatic assertions. The available evidence, as he points out, is fragmentary, and does not justify the popular race-theories that are evolved from it. He is inclined to think that the primitive stock of tha New Stone Age in Britain has survived, with much modification at different epochs. Typical examples of Neo- lithic man may, he says, be found in remote corners, as in the Welsh hills. The first invaders, in the Bronze Age, were, perhaps, " the tall, fair, rather long-headed aristocrats who formed so notable a feature of English life until the rise of the industrial and financial plutocracy swept them aside."