Il8 ADAPTATION AND PROGRESS 



place in his discussion, such as geographical isolation, 1 social 

 contact together with group struggle and selection, 2 migration, 3 

 direct and indirect environmental influence, 4 consciousness of 

 kind, 5 economic conditions, 6 and social, sexual and artificial 

 selection. 7 



Our author attacks the specific problem of environment v . race 

 in explaining ethnic peculiarities and cultural products and con- 

 cludes that environmental factors have been all too largely neg- 

 lected by investigators in the past. " At times," he says, " they 

 rise paramount to all other circumstances." 8 He shows, for 

 example, how climate has determined the segregation of cotton 

 mills about Lancashire; how such social phenomena as divorce, 

 suicide and crime are the products of density of population, 

 economic and cultural conditions, and these in turn of physical 

 and social environment, rather than of race. 9 A favorable geo- 

 graphical environment encourages early marriages as in the case 

 of Italy in contrast to Brittany; 10 it favors the development of 

 village and city life with social contacts resulting in increased 

 individualism, liberty often descending to license and vice and 

 political radicalism, yet withal, progress, whereas the peoples 

 relegated to geographic isolation, with their purer family life 

 and greater stability of character are conservative and non- 

 progressive. 



The phenomenon of the marvellous growth cf cities during the 

 past century is discussed with special reference to its effects on 

 ethnic distribution. City dwellers are found on the whole to be 

 shorter in stature, lighter in weight (especially in tenement 

 districts), and also on the whole with a greater tendency to 

 pigmentation than dwellers in the country. 11 These facts have 

 given rise to the theory of " urban selection," pigmentation 

 being considered to have some relation to vital force. 12 



1 Races in Europe, pp. 56, 74 f., 139, 141, 232, 529. 



2 Ibid., pp. i, 56. 8 Ibid., p. 514. 



* Ibid., p. 16. 9 Ibid., pp. 520 ff. 



4 Ibid., Introduction, chs. XIX, XXI. 10 Ibid., p. 533. 



6 Ibid., p. 2. u Ibid., pp. 551 f. 

 Ibid., pp. 338, 475. u Ibid., p. 557. 



7 Ibid., pp. 49 f., 85 f., 89, 201 f., 292, 398 f. 



