164 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



has been crowding its predecessor to the wall in every direction.* 

 This has been proved beyond all possible doubt. In the nooks and 

 corners, the swamps and hills, where the railroad and the newspaper 

 are less important factors in everyday life, there we find a more 

 primitive stratum of language. Is it not justifiable for us, from 

 the observed parallel between speech and brunetteness, to assume 

 also that of the two the darkest type in the British Isles is the older? 

 Such is our argument. One detail of our map confirms us in this 

 opinion. Notice the strongly marked island of brunetteness just 

 north of London. Two counties, Hertfordshire and Buckingham- 

 shire, are as dark as Wales, and others north of them are nearly as 

 unique. All investigation goes to show that this brunette outcrop 

 is a reality. It is entirely severed from the main center of dark eyes 

 and hair in the west by an intermediate zone as light as Sussex, 

 Essex or Hampshire (Hants). The explanation is simple. We 

 have already shown that the south Saxons entered England by the 

 back door. They spread inland from the southern coast, prevented 

 from following up the Thames by the presence of London. On the 

 other side the same invaders pushed south from the Wash and the 

 Humber. These two currents joined along the light intrusive zone. 

 Our dark spot is the eddy of native traits, persistent because less 

 overrun by the blond Teutons. The fens on the north, London 

 on the south with dense forests in early times, left this population 

 relatively at peace. This, history teaches us. Natural science cor- 

 roborates it strikingly. In a later article, considering purely social 

 phenomena, we shall show that peculiarities in suicide, land tenure, 

 habits of the people, and other details of these counties are likewise 

 the concomitants of this same relative isolation. The fact is all the 

 more striking because the district lies so close to the largest city of 

 Europe. 



This variation of brunetteness in Britain is not a modern phe- 

 nomenon. The contrast between northeast and southwest, while of 

 course largely a result of the Teutonic invasions of historic times, 

 should not be entirely ascribed to them. They have in all likelihood 

 merely accentuated a condition already existing. This we assume 

 from the testimony of Latin writers. In fact, Tacitus' statements, 

 the mainstay of the hypothesis of an Iberian substratum of popula- 

 tion in Britain, prove that long before the advent of the Saxons sev- 

 eral distinct physical types coexisted in Roman Britain. One of 

 these, he tells us in the eleventh chapter of his Agricola, was the 

 Caledonian, " red-haired and tall " ; the other, that of the Silures in 

 southern Wales, with " dark complexion and curly hair." He also 



* Ravenstein has mapped it in detail for different decades in the Journal of the Royal 

 Statistical Society, London, vol. xlii, 18*79, pp. 579-643. 



