THE RACIAL GEOGRAPHY OF EUROPE. j-jj 



Probability is rendered certainty by corroborative evidence 

 from a large part of Europe that the Alpine type for some reason 

 always takes to the woods and hills when in competition with the 

 Teutonic race. We shall be able to show it in detail for France, 

 Germany, Austria, and elsewhere, as we have already done for 

 the Tyrol. Just across the Rhine in the Vosges it is true, and in 

 Belgium it determines the division line of Walloons from Flem- 

 ings. We may accept the law as proved beyond reasonable doubt. 



This population of the inner Black Forest being Alp'ine, ought 

 racially to be dark in the color of the hair and eyes. Neverthe- 

 less, the evidence all goes to show that, instead of being darker, it 

 really manifests a distinct tendency toward blondness. Here, 

 again, we are able to draw proof from two separate sources which 

 serve as a check upon one another. The ground tints upon our 

 map represent the percentage of pure blondes among the school 

 children, as gathered in the great census conducted by Virchow. 

 They show that a considerable part of the " Alpine area," meas- 

 uring the head form, contains an abormal number of blond chil- 

 dren. For example, forty-two hundred children in this Alpine 

 area comprised but fifteen per cent of blond types, as compared 

 with an average of nearly twenty-five per cent in the Rhine and 

 Neckar Valleys. For Baden, however, the blondness of the upland 

 interior region does not appear upon this map. Fortunately, 

 we possess detailed results for this side of even greater value, 

 since Dr. Ammon has studied the adult population. He asserts 

 that there is a regularly increasing blondness toward the center 

 of the Forest.* Why did this not appear among the thousands 

 of school children in Baden studied by Virchow ? To venture a 

 rash hypothesis, may it not have been because the influences of 

 environment had not had time to produce their efi^ects so strongly 

 in childhood, and that they appeared in accentuated form at a 

 later period of life ? Before we proceed to discuss the exact cause 

 of this surprising reversal of racial characteristics, let us con- 

 sider one other example of a similar character. 



Some years ago Dr. Stucler conducted a great investigation 

 upon the color of the hair and eyes of some ninety-four thousand 

 school children in the canton of Berne, in Switzerland.! As a re- 

 sult he discovered another one of these confusing phenomena of 

 racial improbabilities. It appeared that here also there was an 

 appreciable tendency toward blondness in the high Alps, racial 

 tendencies to the contrary notwithstanding. Topographically, 



* For example, Wolfaeh, in the southern part of the " Alpine area," with the broadest 

 heads in Baden, contains thirty-one per cent of blondes among adults. Ammon, op. cit. In 

 this commune sixty-four per cent of the cephalic indices were above 85. 



\ Mittheilungen der Naturforschenden Gesellschaft in Bern, 1880, Heft 979, p. 54 scq. 



