394 SCIENCE PROGRESS. 



ing one, Linz, the proportions are identical. So far, then, 

 there is blank disappointment ; but when the eyes are 

 examined the case is quite different : 27 cities show a larger 

 proportion of dark eyes than their environs, and 3 only a 

 less proportion. 1 In several of these 27 cases questions of 

 race at once suggest themselves. In the Czechs, as in the 

 Irish, the combination of light eyes with dark hair is 

 common, while it is rare among the Germans. When, 

 therefore, we find that in all the 6 cities of Moravia 

 German is the school language, while in the country 

 districts it is either Slavonic or mixed, and that in every 

 one of these cities the eyes are darker and the hair lighter 

 than in the surrounding districts, we need go no further for 

 an explanation. But this will not serve in all the cases ; 

 and some probability remains that there is a certain kind of 

 selection at work to darken the eyes of the urban popula- 

 tion. 



In Belgium the case is not so clear. Ghent, Antwerp, 

 Ostend, and Verviers come out much darker than their 

 neighbours ; in most other cases the differences are slight 

 either way. The cantons in Belgium are generally large, 

 so that it is difficult to separate the urban and the rural popu- 

 lations. I have however picked out 1 1 cantons in which I 

 think the urban element most greatly preponderates, and the 

 results are as follows. 



Of the 11,9 have a larger percentage of dark eyes than 

 the arrondissements to which they belong, 1 of lighter eyes ; 

 and in one, Mechlin, there is equality. But the hair, as in 

 Austrian schedules, comes out about equal ; in 6 of the 

 towns it is darker ; in 5, including Brussels and Liege, it is 

 lighter. Ghent is, I suppose, the city in which the unfavour- 

 able selective influences of urban life (overcrowding, poverty, 

 sedentary occupation, infectious disease, etc.) are likely to 

 have been most intense. 



In Switzerland Dr. Kollmann's schedules yield only two 

 instances of a nearly pure urban community, Basel and 



1 Dozen, Bielitz, and Czernowitz (in the Bukowina) : they are all 

 comparatively small places, and all near to race frontiers, which may 

 possibly account for the anomaly. 



