the hopper of a box-like machine full of small iron rods extending crosswise. As the corn passes through, the silk that is attached to it catches on the rods, which can be readily removed from time to time and cleaned. The corn has to be cooked very much longer than the tomatoes, but in most other respects the work of canning is the same. Farmers who do not themselves can, but raise corn for others to put up, often realize as high as fifty dollars an acre for their corn at the cannery, and have the fodder left for their own cattle.

The canning of crabs is carried on, but not very extensively. It is one of the industries that still awaits thorough development. The experience of the past. has shown that this might be done on a very much larger scale, and with profit. The crabs are so abundant in the Chesapeake that if they were systematically captured for canning purposes the industry might become a vast one. They are so numerous that in many places there is no market for them. In the Chesapeake thousands of them are often dragged to the shore by the nets of the fishermen to die or to creep back. Sometimes the fishermen club them to death, to keep them from getting back into their nets. In great storms they are cast up on the beach in windrows. Near the canneries there is always a ready sale for them, and some persons make a dollar and a half or two dollars a day selling them at a cent a dozen or ten cents a bushel. Four million pounds of crabs are annually sent out of Maryland waters alone, the greater part of these being still in their shells. This abundant supply indicates something of what the canning of crabs might become if the industry were developed, as it no doubt will be in the future.

The peach orchards of Maryland are now chiefly confined to that part known as the Eastern Shore, a name which is given to four ninths of the peninsula on the east side of the Chesapeake, three ninths of which belong to Delaware, and two ninths to Virginia. There is no part of the world where the peach is cultivated to so large an extent or with such marked success. The peach orchards between the upper portions of Delaware and Maryland and Cape Charles are vast and almost innumerable, so that the traveller on the railroad that runs from north to south through this peninsula seems to be pass

ing through a continuous orchard of the fruit for many miles. Immense quantities are sent to market by steam and sail boats, and an equal number are used in the canning and evaporating establishments, yet in addition many millions of baskets are shipped by rail. The quantities of peaches canned and evaporated in that region are almost if not entirely equal to the enormous output by rail and boat. Many a grower of peaches has a thousand acres of trees in his orchards. In this same part of the State several vegetables are canned, such as asparagus, peas, and beans, while apples, pears, plums, apricots, and quinces, which are grown with wonderful success, are also preserved in this way for winter use. Of the smaller fruits, such as strawberries, raspberries, and blackberries, large quantities are annually canned.

But there is still one more important feature of Maryland canning,- that of oysters. Besides the enormous output of these bivalves from the Chesapeake in the shell or shucked in large vessels, and for planting and farming in other waters, there are also immense quantities sent out in cans. This industry is carried on chiefly in Baltimore. Scows laden with oysters are towed to that city from all parts of the bay, and their contents are carried from the wharves to the canneries in wag

ons.

There the process of preparing them is carried on. First they are opened by hand. This process is one with which every person who has eaten oysters at the "raw-box" of a restaurant is somewhat familiar. The usual thin-bladed oysterknife is used. The oyster, being rested on a little iron anvil, is struck with the handle of the knife; the shell is thus broken at the edge, and at this point the blade is inserted. A twist of the knife pries open the shell.

No satisfactory way of opening oysters by machinery has yet been invented, since there is always danger of splintering the shell and thus mixing sharp fragments with the meats. The buckets of oysters are then carried along to the cans, and these, when filled, are passed on to the capper. When sealed they are placed in a bath of hot water, and are then rendered air-tight. Canned oysters nowadays find their chief market, of course, in regions remote from the coast.. Twenty years ago there were hundreds of towns not more than two hundred miles from the

coast, that on account of their distance from a railroad received oysters only in cans. But the multiplication of railroads and the daily running of special oyster trains from the eastern cities have changed all this. Now oysters in the shell, and shucked oysters by the gallon, are to be had daily in all the large towns within a thousand miles of the Atlantic coast. But yet there remains market enough in the farther interior for all the oysters that can be packed.

All of these and other canned goods now occupy a very large place in the food sup

ply of the world. They enable us to have large quantities of summer food for winter use, and to enjoy in remote parts of the world, or on the high seas, the fruits of home. But, still further, they enable the laboring man and the poor to obtain a great variety of good food, wholesome and nourishing, with little expenditure of money, as these goods are put upon the market at extremely low prices. Thus the art of canning foods may justly be classed among the important inventions of our age. CALVIN DILL WILSON.

FRANKLIN, OHIO.

T

HE origin of a people may be sought in several ways. It may be sought by an examination of the history which embodies the traditions of the race and perpetuates the dramatic and economic incidents of its development. This method in the present instance is by no means the most reliable. A second source of information is found in the method of philology, which examines the structure and grammatical affinities of the language. A third method is pursued by anthropology, which studies the physical characteristics of the race and the conditions of its environment, and examines the evidence found in the height, color of skin and hair, shape of the skull, temperament, etc., of the individual members of the race. Anthropology in its widest sense includes the craniology which studies the skulls exhumed from ancient mounds, and archæology, which examines the ruins of towns and buildings to determine their architectural affinities.

The orthodox account of the origin of the English as found in the ordinary textbook is not remarkable for complexity. We are simply told that England was once occupied by a people called the Britons, who were subsequently conquered by the Romans, and that after the withdrawal of the Romans the island was invaded by the Saxons, who exterminated the original inhabitants (with the exception of a remnant in Wales) and occupied the country. Unfortunately for the veracity of history and the cherished illusions of youth, this theory, on a closer analysis, has proved to be somewhat imaginative. There has of recent years arisen a school of ethnologists

who from a critical examination of the very meagre documentary records of the Saxon invasion have inclined very strongly to doubt if the Britons were really exterminated by their conquerors, or that the Saxons invaded the country in numbers sufficiently great to become a dominant numerical element in the population.

The

It is a curious fact that every history of England relating to the Saxon conquest is based almost exclusively on the chronicles of an ecclesiastic called Gildas, reputed to have lived about the middle of the sixth century, and who wrote an epistle concerning the invasion of the Saxons. "Historia Britonius" of Nennius, the chronicle of Beda, and in fact every later history, have drawn their facts regarding the conquest of the Britons from this earlier record of Gildas. The only other available sources of information are the casual allusions to the event found in the classical and Byzantine historians, who mentioned it only incidentally. There is no British or contemporaneous account apart from two traditions found in the Welsh Triads, which we will take up later. The work of Gildas itself is not contemporary, but was written a generation subsequent to the conquest, and is founded, not on personal knowledge or earlier records, but on information furnished the historian by certain exiles from Britain to Armorica, where he resided. So far as the history of Gildas deals with the Roman invasion or describes the character of the Britons previous to the coming of the Saxons it is decidedly unreliable and conflicts with the statements of Tacitus and other Roman his

torians whose authority is much to be preferred. But regarding the Saxon invasion it is impossible to test the credibility of his narrative in the absence of other histories, except by an analysis of the text.

According to Gildas the Saxons practically exterminated the Britons, destroying many in battle, and driving some over the sea. A few were reduced to slavery, and the rest were slaughtered in the mountains. Previously he had stated (in contradiction to Cæsar and Tacitus) that the Britons were cowards and could be subdued by threats; and subsequently he describes a victory of the British over the Saxons and states that there were no more wars with foreigners, but only civil contests in the country.

Now this is all a tissue of contradictions. If the Britons were cowards, how could they engage in a prolonged and bloody war with the Saxons? If they could be subdued by threats, why were they subdued by the sword? If they were annihilated, how could they win a battle subsequently or engage in civil wars among themselves after the wars with the foreigner? If they were slaughtered in the hills of Wales, why do several millions of their descendants dwell there to-day? Such contradictions as these make one suspicious of Gildas, and there are other historic facts to justify the suspicion. We know from Cæsar that Britain was very populous in his time, and the population must have increased before the coming of Hengist. Gildas states that the Saxons came in three keels, which would certainly not justify the inference that their numbers were large. Other invasions, of course, there were, but it is much to be doubted if any large body of Saxons would transport their families in small boats over the stormy sea into an unknown land held by a warlike foe when other countries equally fertile lay before them in Europe. It is more reasonable to suppose that the Saxon invasion was rather one of an army than a people; that it was followed by an essentially military occupation of the country like that of the English in India; and that the great body of the people remained Celtic in character, adopting officially the language and the institutions of their conquerors. If this is the case the English are not of Saxon origin.

The earliest traditions concerning the

origin of the British are found in the Welsh Triads, which contain the genealogy and history of that people as preserved by their lineal descendants. Both the veracity and the authenticity of the Triads of course are open to suspicion, but as their account of the Roman occupation reveals no striking disparity from that of the classic historians or from a rational interpretation of facts preserved from other sources, there is a very reasonable presumption that their evidence on other epochs will reveal an equal veracity-a proper allowance of course being made for an inevitable partiality arising from racial sympathy.

The Triads relate the arrival and settlement in England of three tribes who came from the East. The first of these to arrive was the Cymry, who came from the land of Har (said to be in the neighborhood of Constantinople). The Cymry were followed by the Lloegrians and the Britons. These last two tribes, though later in arrival, were of the same primitive stock as the Cymry. Subsequent to the arrival of these tribes in the country came others who did not obtain their lands by conquest, but by treaty and agreement with the first arrivals, and who were not admitted to the privileges of pure-born Cymry till the ninth generation. These were the Caledonians and the Gwyddylians, who settled in the north; and the Gwyn Galedin, who settled in the Isle of Wight. After them came three more tribes, who took forcible possession of the land they occupied. These were the Coranians, the Gwyddyle Ffichte, and the Saxons.

As to the origin of the Britons (or Cymry) and their place of residence previous to their migration to England, nothing very definite is known; but the Triads declare they came from the East,— from a land apparently in the neighborhood of Greece. A very interesting attempt has recently been made to identify the Cymry with the ancient Greeks. It has been shown that there is a close resemblance between the Greek language and the Welsh. Cæsar declares* that the Greek writing was used by the Druids in their forms of worship at the time of his arrival in England. And not only the language, but the doctrine itself, both in its external forms and, so far as is known, in its esoteric philosophy, bore a very significant resemblance to the worship of *De Bello Gallico, vi. 14.

Apollo as practised in ancient Greece. The teachings of the Druids have much in common with those of Pythagoras, and the use of the harp is strongly suggestive of the Eleusinian mysteries. References to communications between Britain and Greece are not wanting in the Grecian historians. Strabo refers to the commerce between the two countries, and Diodorus describes an island lying opposite to the land of the Celts and states that its inhabitants, the Hyperboreans, were in intimate relations with the Greeks and worshipped Apollo. A closer identity is found in the resemblance between the Greeks and English, both in their mental and physical characteristics, and a very interesting psychological parallel might be drawn to illustrate their racial identity.

So far as the evidence of philology goes it may be said that while the English language shows strong grammatical evidence of a Teutonic origin its vocabulary is not wholly Teutonic. It is doubtful if more than a third of the words in the vocabulary are Saxon derivatives, and the presence of a pronounced Cymric element is very obvious, particularly in the names of rivers and localities. The English language is also remarkable for the irregularity of its pronunciation,- a quality in which it differs strikingly from the languages of Europe and displays an emphatic affinity to Welsh: It is impossible in a sketch like this to quote the many instances which indicate the lingual demarcation of English from the original Teutonic branch or from the German language of to-day. Even in the grammar itself, supposed to be wholly Teutonic, a striking differentiation is apparent.

The evidence of a language, however, is not necessarily conclusive as to the origin of a people. We know that the French are not of Italic origin, though their language is saturated with Latin idioms reminiscent of the Roman occupation. On the other hand the Normans, originally of Gothic stock, abandoned their native language to adopt that of the Franks, whom they conquered. The Irish of to-day speak English. On purely philological grounds, therefore, one might infer that the French were descendants of the Romans; that the Normans were of French origin; or that the Irish were descended from the English, a very startling conclusion which makes one suspicious of philology.

Other evidences of the origin of the

English have been sought by anthropology through a study of the physical history and characteristics of the race and its natural environment, the remains of its ancient cities and monuments, and the contents of ancient graveyards. The English of to-day are chiefly a dark-haired race, while the Saxons were fair. A Saxon origin has been inferred from the fact that the English are tall and powerfully-built relatively to the present descendants of the Celts, but it has been shown that the ancient Britons were also tall and athletic in their habits. The evidence of craniology is also of interest, though somewhat conflicting. The Celt and especially the Cymry are supposed to have a long oval skull, while that of the Saxon is said to be short and round. An examination of the ancient mounds reveals the persistence of the oval or dolichocephalic skull long after the Saxon conquest, and in the graves of subsequent generations both the brachycephalic and dolichocephalic types are found side by side, seeming to indicate the existence of two races in the country. The dolichocephalic skull is very prevalent in England to-day.

On the whole, the burden of the evidence favors the existence of a strong Celtic element in the English population of to-day. It might be said that there were other invasions of a Teutonic element - the Danish and the Normanwhich would neutralize that element and vitiate this conclusion, but such is not the case. Both these invasions were military and not numerically formidable. The Danish settlements were largely confined to the coast. It is a mistake to suppose that the Normans were an exclusively Gothic people at the time of their invasion of England. In the interval between their conquest of France and their conquest of England they had intermarried and become absorbed in the Frankish people, and they doubtless recruited their army and camp-followers largely from the Celts. As far as the Danes are concerned there is no necessity to believe that they were exclusively akin to the Saxons. Berzelius declares that there was a strong Cymric element in the population both of Denmark and Sweden, and the presence of the dolichocephalic skulls in old Scandinavian graves tends to confirm his conclusion. ETHELBERT F. H. CROSS.

TORONTO.