288 THE ARYAN QUESTION. vi 



heads; and, in that of the antecedent Gaulish inva- 

 sions, the physical characters ascribed to the lead- 

 ing tribes point to the same conclusion. Whatever 

 the causes which led to the breaking out of bounds 

 of the blond long-heads, in mass, at particular 

 epochs, the natural increase in numbers of a vigor- 

 ous and fertile race must always have impelled 

 them to press upon their neighbours, and thereby 

 afford abundant occasions for intermixture. If, at 

 any given pre-historic time, we suppose the lowlands 

 verging on the Baltic and the North Sea to have 

 been inhabited by pure blond long-heads, while the 

 central highlands were occupied by pure brunet 

 short-heads, the two would certainly meet and in- 

 termix in course of time, in spite of the vast belt of 

 dense forest which extended, almost uninterrupted- 

 ly, from the Carpathians to the Ardennes; and the 

 result would be such an irregular gradation of the 

 one type into the other as we do, in fact, meet with. 

 On the south-east, east, and north-east, 

 throughout what was once the kingdom of Poland, 

 and in Finland, the preponderance of broad-heads 

 goes along with a wide prevalence of blond com- 

 plexion and of good stature. In the extreme 

 north, on the other hand, marked broad-headed- 

 ness is combined with low stature, swarthiness, and 

 more or less strongly Mongolian features, in the 

 Lapps. And it is to be observed that this type pre- 

 vails increasingly to the eastward, among the cen- 

 tral Asiatic populations. 



