THE RACIAL GEOGRAPHY OF EUROPE. 



761 



teristic namely, the pigmentation of tlie hair and eyes for more 

 specific results. There are three reasons which compel us to take 

 this action. In the first place, the coloration of the hair and eyes 

 appears to be less directly open to disturbance from environmental 

 influences than is the skin, and variations in shading may be at 

 the same time more easily and delicately measured. Secondly, 

 the color or, if you please, the absence of color, in the hair and 

 eyes is more truly peculiar to the European race than is the light- 

 ness of its skin. There are many peoples in Europe who are 

 darker skinned than certain tribes in Asia or the Americas ; but 

 there is none in which blondness of hair and eyes occurs to any 

 considerable degree. It is in the flaxen hair and blue eye that 

 the peculiarly European type comes to its fullest physical ex- 

 pression. This at once reveals the third inducement for us to 

 focus our study upon these apparently subordinate traits, Eu- 

 rope alone of all the continents is divided against itself. We 

 find blondness in all degrees of intensity scattered among a host 

 of much darker types. A peculiar advantage is herein made 

 manifest. Nowhere else in the world are two such distinct vari- 

 eties of man in such intimate contact with one another. From the 

 precise determination of their geographical distribution we may 

 gain an insight into many interesting racial events in the past.^ 



The first general interest in the pigmentation of the hair and 

 eyes in Europe dates from 1865, although Dr. Beddoe began nearly 

 ten years earlier to collect data from all over the continent. His 

 untiring perseverance led him to take upward of one hundred 

 thousand personal observations in twenty-five years. During our 

 own civil war about a million recruits were examined in this 

 respect, many of them being immigrants from all parts of Europe. 

 The extent of the work which has been done since these first 

 beginnings is indicated by the following approximate table : 



Numher of Observations. 



It thus appears that the material is ample in amount. The 

 great difficulty in its interpretation lies in the diversity of the 

 systems which have been adopted by different observers. It is 

 not easy to give an adequate conception of the confusion which 



