22, PROCEEDINGS OF THE CANADIAN INSTITUTE. 
so great is the mass of evidence showing that humidity has been 
an efficient agent in producing fairness that I must hold to the belief 
that there is something in the views which I have just attempted to ex- 
press. Yet, whatever may have been the causes which have given rise 
to the diversity of complexion that exists among mankind, it is clear 
that the colour of each race is now so fixed, that climatic influences 
change it very slowly. Neither the negro nor the white man on this. 
continent has varied much in the direction of the Indian. Both 
white and negro have, however, been here only a few centuries. A 
much longer time has elapsed since the populous and frozen North 
sent her barbarian hordes across Rhene and the Danaw to destroy 
the Roman empire, but yet, wherever we have historical reasons 
for expecting to discover traces of German blood, we find a 
relatively, large number of blondes. The land of the conquered 
countries, as a matter of course, fell into the hands of the German 
invaders, and from them sprang a new aristocracy. It is remarkable 
that, to this day, the nobility and gentry of every part of Christian 
Europe are exceptionally fair. The conquerors naturally settled in 
the greatest numbers in the most fertile parts ; it is precisely in the 
mountains and the other comparatively infertile districts that the 
brunette whites are most numerous. In Switzerland, for example, 
there is a greater percentage of blondes in the more level parts in the 
centre, than in Mount Jura on the west, or the Rhaetian Alps on the 
east. Similar facts meet us in England and France. Wherever there 
is reason to believe that there has been a settlement of Germans or 
Scandinavians, the complexions are to this day comparatively fair. 
The nine centuries that have elapsed since the Northmen settled in 
Normandy have not made their descendants as dark as the neighbour- 
ing Bretons ; nor have thirteen hundred years made the West Saxon 
of Somerset and Gloucester similar in complexion to the Welshman 
of Glamorgan and Caermarthen. 
Facts like these have led many ethnologists and anthropologists to 
conclude, perhaps, too hastily, that colour is the least variable of all 
the characters that mark a race. This, if true, leads with consider- 
able probability, to the hitherto little noticed, but most important 
conclusion, that the original seat of the Aryan race was in Kurope, 
and on or near the shores of the Baltic Sea. I propose now to ask 
your attention while I show how this conclusion follows, and very 
