220 Notes on the Evidence bearing
of the Shannon, and the stature there to be somewhat less
than that attained in other parts of Ireland. But Connaught
and Monster are the two tallest districts of Ireland, and Con-
naught has the fewest dark people. It seems likely that the
Iberian element was more generally diffused in Ireland than
in England and Scotland, and became, in consequence, more
complete and evenly absorbed by the Gael. Leinster can
hardly owe its specially large proportion of dark people to an
unusual abundance of Iberians, but rather to the Anglo-
Norman barons and their retainers who landed with, and
after, "Strongbow," and to other immigrants from England
and Wales. Turning to England, we find the distribution of
the dark people much more complicated. Of course the
difficulty is to account for the presence of so large a number
of dark-haired people in the district east of a line drawn from
north-west Lincolnshire to the western border of Hampshire,
and to explain the contrast between the abundance of dark-
haired people in Lincolnshire and their fewness in East
Yorkshire—two districts generally considered equally and
exclusively Anglian and Scandinavian. The supposition of a
specially large survival of the Iberian element in these eastern
counties south of the Humber is a singularly unlikely one.
And the influence of the immigration of Norman, French, or
Walloon artisans—supposing them to have been more dark
than fair—would be chiefly shown in and near London, in
Norwich, and in other towns, and would not account for the
fact that neither London nor Norfolk is so dark as Lincoln-
shire. On the other hand, there seems to be little doubt that
the Angles, Saxons, Jutes and Scandinavians, who are known
to have settled thickly in these counties, and whose descend-
ants are unanimously supposed to be more numerous in
them than in the counties to the west, were fair people.
The most probable explanation of this curious prevalence
of dark people in the more Teutonic counties of England 30
30 It must be remembered that the counties having the smallest per-
centage of fair persons are also in the eastern half of England. They
are Leicester, Suffolk, Essex, Middlesex, and Hertford. Next to them
are Lincolnshire, Bedfordshire, Berkshire, Warwick, and Worcester.