72 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



The usual assumption is that the Jews, originally, if they were any- 

 thing, were brunettes. But Dr. Fishberg finds that hardly more than 

 half — 52 per cent, of the males, and 57 per cent, of the females — are 

 dark. The blonds, he concludes, must be due to past intermarriages 

 with non-Jewish races. 



Is the conclusion inevitable? Animals are known to change color 

 with a change of environment — why not men ? Professor Eidgeway in 

 his presidential address to the Eoyal Anthropological Institute, January, 

 1910, refers to a bit of positive evidence that they may. Mr. J. V. 

 Hodgson, biologist of the Scott Antarctic Expedition, reported that as 

 a result of living under such unusual conditions, the eyes of the mem- 

 bers of the expedition became so blue as to occasion remark on their 

 return to New Zealand and also on their arrival home in England. 

 " Color, therefore, like the cephalic index and stature, is also prone to 

 change and in itself is not deserving of implicit trust." 



Dr. Eishberg dilates upon the statistics of intermarriage between 

 Jews and Christians in Europe to support his thesis that assimilation is 

 the destiny of the Jews, as mixture has been their history. The figures 

 for certain localities are sufficiently striking. In Prussia, during 1900- 

 1907, there were 21 mixed to every 100 pure marriages. In Berlin 

 there were, in 1905-6, 44 mixed marriages to every 100 pure Jewish 

 marriages. In Hamburg and Copenhagen similar high rates of inter- 

 marriage are found. Dr. Eishberg argues that the Jews are bound to 

 become even more composite as a race than they are now. 



His zeal, however, seems to get the better of him. He points out 

 that this intermarrying tendency means an appreciable loss to Judaism, 

 and the more so since the children of mixed marriages tend to marry 

 with Christians rather than with Jews. The children of mixed marri- 

 ages are mostly brought up in the religion of the non-Jewish parent. 

 " It is Buppin's opinion that hardly ten per cent, of the children 

 resulting from mixed marriages remain Jews for any considerable 

 length of time. Of these it is doubtful whether any Jews are left after 

 two or three generations." But a couple of pages farther on we are 

 impressively reminded of the " new anthropological types " that are 

 being introduced " among the children of Israel." We ask : If none of 

 the offspring of mixed marriages are left among the Jews after two or 

 three generations how can new anthropological types arise among them ? 

 And we ask further, whether the anthropological types that Dr. Eish- 

 berg finds now among the Jews arose in the same way ! 



He quotes Professor Boas's statement that if two types of equal num- 

 ber intermingle, there will be in the fourth generation less than one 

 person in ten thousand of pure blood ; and if one group is smaller than 

 the other, it will, of course, lose its identity even more quickly. But 

 Professor Boas assumes, in order to be able to make his calculation, that 



