1SS9.] oil [Brill ton. 



blondes, with light hair and blue eyes, I met a Tuscan wine- 

 mercbant who lived near Florence, and lie pointed with pride to 

 his handsome blonde beard, informing me that his family claimed 

 Etruscan descent and that his beard was proof of it ! There is 

 evidence from ancient art that this piece of folk-lore is correct, 

 and the eminent antbropt^logist I have just quoted, M. Topinard, 

 sums up, with his usual correctness, our anthropologic knowl- 

 edge of this people when he says : " From the evidence before 

 us we may decide that the Etruscans were of large stature, 

 blondes, and dolichocephalous ; while their predecessors, the Um- 

 brians, were small and brachycephalous." * 



In all these physical traits we discover a coincidence with the 

 ancient Libyan or true Berber tj^pe, as seen in the Kabyles of the 

 Djurdjura mountains, the E-ifians of Morocco, and the former 

 inhabitants of the Canary islands, the Guanches. There is no 

 doubt but that the last mentioned were a true branch of the Ber- 

 ber stock. The fragments of their language, which have been 

 collected and critically edited by Sabin Berthelot f and others, 

 prove that it was closely allied to the dialect of the Morocco 

 Riflans. Their skeletons show them to Imve been an unusually 

 tall race, quite a number of individuals ranging from six to six 

 and a half feet in heiglit.J Their skulls present the same dolicho- 

 cephalic index as the Kabyles, and that they were largely blondes 

 is attested b}^ the early navigators, who speak of their long yel- 

 low hair reaching down to below their waists.§ The presence of 

 these blondes on the Canaries destroj^s the theory sometimes 

 advanced that the blonde hue of the Kabyles arose from admix- 

 ture with the Goths, at the period of the dissolution of the west- 

 ern empire ; for the Canaries were peopled by the Berbers long 

 before the Christian era, and Br. Verneau has quite recently 

 discovered Numidian inscriptions there.|| But for that matter 

 this hj'pothesis is untenable for other reasons. Tlie blonde Ber- 

 bers are referred to on Egj-ptian monuments, and as for the 



* " Les Etruscains etaient grauds, blonds et dolichocephales," Elements d' Anthropologie, 

 p. 498. 



t AntiquiUs Cananennei^, Paris, 1879. 



JDr. R. Verneau, La TaiUe des Anciens Habitants des lies Canaries, iu t\w Ecvue d' An- 

 thrnpologie, 1887. 



§ •' Crineslongos et flavos usque ad umbilicum fer(5," says the clironicler of the expedi- 

 tion sent out by Alphonso IV. Ample evidence is collected by Berthelot in the liulklin 

 de la Societc d' Ethnologie, 1815, p. 121, sqq. 



II Revue g.' Anthropologie, 1887, p. 650. 



