768 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



loons brunette traits are upward of a third more frequent than 

 among the Flemish in northern Belgium. This is especially 

 marked by the prevalence of dark hair in the hilly country south 

 of Brussels. The British Isles offer another example of local differ- 

 ences in this respect which can not be ascribed to environment. 

 Wales and Ireland, Cornwall and part of Scotland are appreciably 

 brunette, as compared with other regions near by. The contrast 

 between Normandy and Brittany in France is of even greater value 

 to us in this connection. Dark hair is more than twice as com- 

 mon in the Breton cantons as it is along the English Channel in 

 Normandy. These differences can not be due to the Gulf Stream 

 mildness of the western climate or to the physical environment in 

 any other way. If we may judge from our scanty data for Spain, 

 another racial break occurs here as well, which seems to justify 

 the statement that " beyond the Pyrenees begins Africa." In the 

 other direction, among the Hungarians, we begin to scent an 

 Asiatic influence in the dark population of the southeast of 

 Europe. 



Perhaps the most conspicuous example of the racial fixity of 

 this trait of pigmentation is offered by the Jews. They have pre- 

 served their Semitic brunetteness through all adversities. Socially 

 ostracized and isolated, they have kept this coloration despite all 

 migrations and changes of climate. In Germany to-day forty-two 

 per cent of them are pure brunettes in a population containing 

 only fourteen per cent of the dark type on the average. They are 

 thus darker by thirty per cent than their Gentile neighbors. As 

 one goes south this difference tends to disappear. In Austria 

 they are less than ten per cent darker than the general popula- 

 tion ; and finally in the extreme south they are even lighter than 

 the populations about them. This is especially true of the red- 

 haired type common in the East. To discover such differences 

 requires minute examination. The reward has been to prove 

 that pigmentation in spite of climate is indeed a fixed racial char- 

 acteristic among the people of Europe. We are therefore encour- 

 aged to hope that great racial groups of population may still 

 yield us evidence of their relationship or lack of it in this respect, 

 as well as in the head form. 



It will be necessary, before considering this matter further, for 

 us to turn aside for a moment to study the population of central 

 Europe a little more in detail than we have thus far been able to 

 do. We shall attempt to prove a point of great significance. The 

 broad-headed type not only forms the bulk of the present popu- 

 lation of the Alpine highlands. This was established in the pre- 

 ceding paper. We have now to prove that it at the same time is 

 clearly the oldest or most primitive element among the inhab- 

 itants of this region ; that it lies so near the soil that the racial 



