vm THE HUMAN EACES 339 



breeds preserve the hereditary characteristics for any length of 

 time or are capable of becoming a half-bred people, properly so- 

 called. The study of such races tends rather to prove that these 

 half-breeds are not capable of such development, but tend to 

 degenerate, and that the greater the difference between the two 

 parents, the more readily does this degeneration take place. 



It is, however, generally held that many causes contribute to 

 the changes which take place in the morphological characteristics 

 of a people owing to intercourse with other nations : amongst 

 others we may mention the invasion of a country by armed foes, 

 such as the repeated incursions of barbaric tribes into Italy after 

 the fall of the Eoman Empire, and the peaceful immigration of 

 workmen in search of employment, of which we have an example 

 in our own day in the immigration of Italian agricultural 

 labourers in South America. K. Livi regards slavery to have 

 been a no less important factor, and points out its influence in the 

 Middle Ages on the anthropological characteristics of Italians, 

 amongst whom it is by no means rare to see Mongolian or Mon- 

 goloid characteristics, which he traces to the Mongolian women 

 who were frequently imported as slaves in the Middle Ages, more 

 especially by the marine republics of Venice and Genoa. 



The Italian people is usually regarded by anthropologists and 

 ethnologists as the result of the mingling of various races which 

 immigrated to the peninsula at different times, both prehistoric 

 and historic, and of which at least two belonged to widely 

 different types, one being dolichocephalic and dark, the other 

 brachycephalic and fair, as is shown to this day by anthropological 

 study of Italians from different parts of the kingdom. We are 

 indebted to E. Livi (1896, 1905) for our most accurate information 

 on this subject, information based by him on the data afforded by 

 the military returns relating to conscripts. 



Taking, for instance, the question of height, Livi showed that 

 there are at present three districts whose inhabitants are tall, all 

 three in northern Italy. First comes Venetia, where there is a 

 large admixture of Illyrian blood ; next, northern Tuscany and 

 eastern Emilia ; lastly, northern and eastern Lombardy. These 

 regions show the effect of the constant immigration of tall races 

 from central and northern Europe which went on until the 

 Lombard invasion. The inhabitants of Sardinia, a large part of 

 Sicily, the coast of the Adriatic, and mountainous regions which 

 did not suffer from these invasions, are for the most part descended 

 from the original inhabitants, who were shorter. 



Montessori (1905), who studied the anthropological character- 

 istics of the women of Latium, came to the conclusion they belong 

 to two types, differing so widely that they appear to spring from 

 different races : one dolichocephalic, dark and short, and more fre- 

 quently seen than the other, which is tall, brachycephalic and fair. 



