GENIUS AND HAIR-COLOR 285 



semblance of support to theories of character based upon the color and 

 structure of the hair. The characteristics of the hair not only form one 

 of the leading tests of nationality, but there is a fairly well-marked 

 difference between the hair of the lower and that of the higher races. 

 In Huxley's celebrated classification of mankind, those peoples low in 

 the scale of development are marked by black hair, usually straight, 

 though sometimes of close spiral form — as, the Australoid, represented 

 by the natives of Australia and the indigenous tribes of southern India, 

 — the Negroid, dwelling between the Sahara and the Cape, — and the 

 Mongoloid, occupying a vast area in Asia. Among the loftier races, on 

 the other hand — the Xanthachroic, or fair whites, and Melanchroic, or 

 dark whites, in Huxley's terminology — the former, occupying northern 

 Europe as their chief seat though traceable also into northern Africa 

 and eastward as far as Hindostan, have hair ranging from straw color 

 to chestnut, and the latter, consisting chiefly of the Celts and of the 

 populations of southern Europe, though finding representatives as far 

 as India, have hair darkening from the middle shades to black; the 

 hair of both of these types, however, as is well known, being usually 

 wavy or curly. 



In the coarseness of the hair the lower peoples probably betray 

 their greater nearness in point of development to the animal ancestor 

 of man, since the crown hair of the anthropoid brute — the chimpanzee, 

 gorilla, orang-utan and gibbon — is of stiff, bristling structure. Nor 

 can we say it is unsafe to infer the condition of man's progenitor in 

 this respect from that of the modern apes, since, aside from all other 

 proofs, there is a striking and peculiarly persuasive circumstance which 

 shows how much of interest to the evolutionist lies hidden away within 

 the cells and pigment-granules of the hair. It is invariably true with 

 man, according to writers upon the subject, that if the beard and head 

 hair vary in color the former is of lighter shade — a number of authori- 

 ties add " generally reddish " — and this strange fact is equally true of 

 the anthropoid apes, with whom the beard is often white, sometimes 

 yellow or reddish; and this analogy with the anthropoids applies not 

 only to the lower human races, with whom, as with the apes, the beard 

 is scanty — it applies as well to the highest human races, with whom 

 fulness of beard is a mark of racial superiority. In color, too, the hair 

 of the anthropoid appears to show a kinship with that of the lower 

 human tribes. The head hair of the chimpanzee is black, sometimes 

 shot through with reddish hairs — that of the gorilla is reddish-brown, 

 as a rule, though sometimes dark brown or even black — that of the 

 orang is reddish-brown, though sometimes dark, with the beard occa- 

 sionally dark yellow — that of the gibbon is usually a glossy black. 

 While it is true that the lower races in Huxley's classification have 

 been marked by black hair and that the hair of the apes is as to some 

 species dark and as to others reddish, yet it is significant that the differ- 



