268 SCIENCE PROGRESS 



Lest any reader should shrink in alarm from a threatened 

 inquiry into the origin of the Aryans, that Holy Grail of 

 anthropological research, let me at once assure them that they 

 will finish this paper with exactly that amount of nescience, 

 knowledge, or prejudice on this point with which they began. 

 So far as I am concerned, the original speakers of the Aryan 

 language or languages ma}- have been tall, blond, long-headed 

 Teutons (Prof. Ridgeway's men of straw), tall, round-headed 

 men of the Alpine or Celtic race, or they may have derived 

 from the short, dark, and long-headed race that has its home on 

 the Mediterranean. That is not the question which in the first 

 of Prof. Ridgeway's theses lies open to the challenge of criticism. 

 The fundamental error in his position consists in an assertion 

 of the essential fluidity of head-form and such-like physical 

 characteristics and in their derivation from climatic and 

 other surroundings, in contrast with an alleged permanence 

 over a given area of the language originally spoken there — 

 what our German friends style the Urspraclie. He predicates 

 also a similar local permanence of idiosyncrasy, polity, and 

 social and religious ideas, but of this more anon. The central 

 and dominant feature of the first portion of his address consists 

 in an ascription to local influences of those physical traits of 

 mankind which have hitherto by all competent investigators 

 been referred to racial causes — that is, to heredity. In this view 

 the brunette dolichocephaly of the Mediterranean race resulted 

 from the climatic conditions of that sea, whatever the original 

 type of the races that now inhabit its vicinity. Similarly, the 

 brachycephaly of the Alpine stock is attributed to their mountain 

 origin, and the blondness of the Teutons to the bitter cold of the 

 Baltic shores. 



On what zoological facts is it proposed to base this sur- 

 prising subversion of accepted views ? Passing by the difference 

 in fur of the Corean and the Indian tigers, obviously due to the 

 colder habitat of the former, and the sandy hue of the animals in 

 Cutch, a simple case of protective colouring, we find the case 

 of Equidce adduced as a proof of alteration of colouring due to 

 climate. Stress is laid on the fact that the southern zebras 

 and the quagga are of a somewhat dun colour, resembling 

 that of the Central Asian Prjevalsky's horse and kiang, whilst 

 the zebras of the intervening tropics affect, as is well known, 

 3. brightly striped livery. The Somali ass, it is also pointed out, 



