220 



The Journal of Heredity 



with these ancestors capriciously, either 

 holding up our own standards to their 

 life histories and marking the contrasts, 

 or, on the other hand, associating 

 their undoubted weaknesses with the 

 age in which they lived and treating 

 leniently frailties that should be con- 

 demned in any age. They did, many 

 of them, come here to escape episco- 

 pacy, not to grant liberty of conscience 

 to others. Most were bigoted in a 

 day when the logic of convictions made 

 men intolerant. The Puritans were 

 the liberals of their time, but they were 

 only a shade more tolerant than the 

 conservative Roman Catholics; while 

 none of them, unless we except possibly 

 the Episcopalians, with somewhat ad- 

 justable convictions, had any affection 

 for radicals such as Wheelwright and 

 Williams. None of them doubted that 

 mystics and witches were in actual com- 

 munion with the devil, however widely 

 they might differ as to punishment 

 suitable for persons thus entangled. 



"Stoughton called the immigrants 

 to New England the choice grain of old 

 England. The settlers in America in- 

 cluded very few of the lowest class, 

 many of the great middle or mediocre 

 multitude, a fair proportion of the upper 

 middle class, such as city merchants, 

 clergymen, and undistinguished visita- 

 tion families, and but few, if any, of 

 the ruling class in Europe. Such as they 

 were, however, they have dominated 

 our political and intellectual life to this 

 day. The Anglo-Saxon half of Boston, 

 for example, produces a dozen eminent 

 men to every leader produced by the 

 Celtic half of the population.^ 



"Whatever their shortcomings may 

 have been, these people, from north to 

 south, were all of the dominant Nordic 

 race so recently described by Mr. Mad- 

 ion Grant: 



'"New England, during Colonial 

 times and long afterward, was far more 

 Teutonic than old England; that is, it 

 contained a smaller percentage of small, 

 pre-Nordic brunets. Anyone familiar 

 with the native New Englander knows 

 the clean-cut face, the high stature, and 



the prevalence of gray and blue eyes and 

 light brown hair, and recognizes that 

 the brunet element is less noticeable 

 there than in the South. 



' ' ' The Southern States were popu- 

 lated also by Englishmen of the purest 

 Nordic type, but there is today, except 

 among the mountains, an appreciably 

 larger amount of brunet types than in 

 the North. Virginia is in the same 

 latitude as North Africa, and south of 

 this line no blonds have ever been able 

 to survive in full vigor, chiefly because 

 the actinic rays of the sun are the same, 

 regardless of other climatic conditions. 

 These rays beat heavily on the Nordic 

 race and disturb their nervous system, 

 wherever the white man ventures too 

 far from the cold and foggy North. 



'"The remaining Colonial elements, 

 the Holland Dutch, the Palatine Ger- 

 mans, who came over in small numbers 

 to New York and Pennsylvania, were 

 also purely Teutonic, while the French 

 Huguenots who escaped to America 

 were drawn much more largely from 

 the Nordic than from the Alpine or 

 Mediterranean elements of France.' 



"If we apply these facts a little more 

 specifically to the portraits, we find that 

 ninety-seven represent Englishmen, 

 fourteen represent Dutchmen, nine are 

 Frenchmen, two Swedes, two Germans, 

 and one a Bohemian. In other words, 

 eight-tenths were English, one-tenth 

 Dutch, and one-tenth French and 

 others." 



In closing this notice of Mr. Bolton's 

 volumes, we can only emphasize their 

 value to students of history, sociology, 

 and eugenics. Here historical material is 

 brought together in the true spirit of 

 natural science, for we have one of its 

 valid methods exemplified, namely, the 

 objective and complete collection of 

 homogeneous data. Mr. Bolton is an 

 historical investigator who recognizes 

 the importance of genealogy and hered- 

 ity and, still more of the need of syste- 

 matic measurements before new histori- 

 cal generalizations are to be made. 



These portraits, in conjunction with 

 those in other volumes, enable us actu- 



^ Popular Science Monthly, April, 1914, p. 400. 



