differences as exist are generally known and appreciated. The
_analysis_ of blood, or stock, which, partially, accounts for them, is
less completely understood.

Hence, in treating of the Maltese, there was no description of the
Arabic stock at all. All that was stated was a reason for believing that
the Maltese belonged to it. Such also, to a great degree, was the case
with the Gibraltar population, and the Heligolanders. And such will be
the case with the Ionian Islanders. It will not be thought necessary to
enlarge upon the Greeks; it will only be requisite to ask how far the
group in question is Grecian.

The very oldest population of the Ionian Islands I believe to have been
_barbarous_--a term which, in the present classical localities, is
convenient.

In the smaller islands, such as Ithaca and Zacynthus, the population had
become Hellenized at the time of the composition of the Homeric poems.
In Corcyra, on the other hand, the original barbarism lasted longer.
Such, at least, is the way in which I interpret the passages in the
Odyssey concerning the Phaeacians (who were certainly not Greek), and the
later language of Thucydides respecting the relations of the Corinthian
colonies of Epidamnus, and Corcyra. The whole context leads to the
belief that, originally, the {apoikoi} were Greeks in contact with a
population which was _not_ Greek.

In respect to the stock to which these early and ante-Hellenic
islanders belonged, the presumption is in favour of its having been the
Illyrian; a stock known only in its probable remains--the Skipitar
(Albanians, or Arnaouts) of Albania.

Time, however, made them all equally Hellenic, a result which was,
probably, completed before the decline of Greek independence; since
which epoch there have been the following elements of intermixture:--

1. Albanian blood, from the opposite coast.

2. Slavonic, from Dalmatia.

3. Italian, from Italy.

4. Turk--I have no pretence to the minute ethnological knowledge which
would enable me even to guess at the proportions.

Upon the whole, however, I believe the Ionian islanders to be what their
language represents them--Greek. At the same time they are Greeks of an
exceedingly mixed blood.[9]

Again--of the foreign elements I imagine the Italian to be the chief.
This, however, is an impression rather than a matured opinion.

The Slavonic element, too, is likely to be considerable. The Byzantine
historians speak of numerous and pe