THE RACIAL GEOGRAPHY OF EUROPE. 



729 



cephaly is tempered only in those districts like Austria, where we 

 know both from language and history that the Teutonic influence- 

 has been strong. Other physical traits will corroborate this deduc- 

 tion shortly. Yet these Austrian Germans are to-day only distantly 

 related to the blond Scandinavian Germans along the Baltic. They 

 resemble the Bavarians and Swabians, who are, as we know, a cross 

 between the blond Teutonic race and a thick-set, broad-headed 

 Alpine one. Leaving aside for the moment the long-headed strip on 

 the Black Sea, shown by our map, we can not resist the final in- 

 ference that all this part of Europe, now inhabited by the southern 

 Slavs, is fundamentally Alpine in racial type, although eroded in 

 places by Teutonic influences from the north, and disturbed by the 

 volcanic irruption of the Finnic Magyars and the Turkish Bul- 

 garians. 



The word Russian is undoubtedly derived from a root meaning- 

 red. Our adjective rufous, and the name Ruthenian, applied to the 

 inhabitants of Galicia, bear the same signification. The name is 

 aptly applied, for the Russians, wherever found, are characterized 

 by a distinct tendency toward what we would term a reddish blond- 

 ness. Janczuk, in the government of Minsk, in White Russia, found 

 almost half his peasants to have hair of this shade.* It is not a real 

 red, however. It might be called either a light chestnut, a dark 

 flaxen, or an auburn tint. This shade of hair, combined with what 

 Talko-Hryncewicz terms a " beer-colored " eye, is the center from 

 which variation up or down occurs. This range of variation is quite 

 considerable, and seems to conform to the general law for all Europe, 

 to which we have already called attention. f Brunetteness increases 

 regularly from north to south. In Russia the population also mani- 

 fests a distinct tendency toward darker hair and eyes from west to 

 east. The Baltic Sea is the center of distribution for blondness, 

 here as in Germany. The relations are well illustrated by the follow- 

 ing table; statistics offer merely a scientific confirmation of the facts 

 of common observation: 



These figures show that the Letto-Lithuanians are the lightest 

 people in the group. They are characterized most frequently by a 

 blue eye, and light hair which rivals the Swedes and E^orwegians in 



* 1890 b, col. 69. 



f Popular Science Monthly, vol. 1, April, 1897, p. 765. 



