THE RACIAL GEOGRAPHY OF EUROPE. 779 



the Oberland sometimes upward of three times as many. Is it 

 possible that this blondness in the mountains may be due to race ? 

 If so, it must be Teutonic. Our map of Europe shows that Switz- 

 erland is cut in halves at just this point by an intrusive strip of 

 northern blondness. Dr. Studer explained it on the assumption 

 that this blondness migrating to the south along the Rhine, and 

 then up the Aar, had heaped itself up, so to speak, against this 

 great geographical barrier. This supposition might be tenable were 

 not the evidence of the head form for all Europe flatly opposed to 

 it. There is nothing to show that the law of segregation of the 

 Alpine type in the areas of isolation does not hold here as in the 

 Tyrol, in western Switzerland, and the Black Forest. Central 

 Switzerland was historically overrun by the Helvetians, who 

 have been identified as Teutonic by race. The Rhsetians were the 

 more primitive Alpine type. Every principle of human nature 

 and ethnology opposes the supposition that these conquering Hel- 

 vetians would be content to leave the darker Rhsetians in full 

 possession of the fertile plain of the Aar while they betook them- 

 selves to the barren valleys of the Oberland. Everywhere else in 

 Europe the rule is, " To the conqueror belong the plains, to the 

 vanquished the hills." The blondness of the Oberland must there- 

 fore be regarded as racially anomalous. Another explanation for 

 it must be found in the influence of environment. 



Our final example, tending to prove that in mountainous areas 

 of isolation some cause is at work which tends to disturb racial 

 equilibrium in the color of the hair and eyes, is drawn from Dr. 

 Livi's monumental treatise on the anthropology of Italy. In 

 entire independence of my own inferences, he arrived at an iden- 

 tical conclusion that blondness somehow is favored by a moun- 

 tainous environment. From a study of three hundred thousand 

 recruits he found that fourteen out of the sixteen compartimenti 

 into which Italy is divided conformed to this law. There was 

 generally from four to five per cent more blondness above the 

 four-hundred-metre line of elevation than below it.* The true 

 significance of these figures is greater than at first appears, for we 

 have again to consider the contrasts in the light of racial proba- 

 bility. In northern Italy the mountains ought to be lighter than 

 the plains, because the Alps are here as elsewhere a stronghold of 

 a racial type relatively blond as compared with the Mediterranean 



* Anthropometria Militare, p. 63 seq. A review of this work is given by the author in 

 Publications of the American Statistical Association, vol. v, pp. 38 and 101 seq. This 

 law is showu by study of provinces also. There are sixty-nine of these available for com- 

 parison. Twelve of these contain no mountains ; thirty-two show manifestly greater blond- 

 ness in both hair and eyes ; fifteen show it partially ; in two, mountain and plain are equal ; 

 and in the remaming seven the law is reversed. Several of these latter are explainable 

 by local disturbances. 



