194- POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



There are two ways in which we may seek to assemble our 

 separate physical traits into types that is, to combine character- 

 istics into living personalities. The one is purely anthropologi- 

 cal, the other inferential and geographical in its nature. The 

 first of these is simple. Answer is sought to a direct question. 

 In a given population, are the blondes more often tall than the bru- 

 nettes, or the reverse ? Is the greater proportion of the tall men 

 at the same time distinctly longer-headed or otherwise ? and the 

 like. If the answers to these questions be constant and consistent, 

 our work is accomplished. Unfortunately they are not always so, 

 hence our necessary recourse to the geographical proof : but they 

 at least indicate a slight trend, which we may follow up by the 

 other means. 



Let it be boldly confessed at the outset that in the great num- 

 ber of cases no invariable association of traits in this way occurs. 

 This is especially true among the people of the central part of 

 Europe. The population of Switzerland, for example, is persist- 

 ently aberrant in this respect ; it is everything anthropologically 

 that it ought not to be. This should not surprise us. In the 

 first place, mountainous areas always contain the " ethnological 

 sweepings of the plains," as Canon Taylor puts it. Especially is 

 this true when the mountains lie in the very heart of the conti- 

 nent, at a focus of racial immigration. Moreover, the environ- 

 ment is competent to upset all probabilities, as we hope to have 

 shown. Suppose a brunette type from the south should come to 

 Andermatt and settle. If the altitude exerts an influence upon 

 the pigmentation, as we have sought to prove ; or if its concomi- 

 tant poverty in the ante-tourist era should depress the stature, 

 the racial equilibrium is as good as vanished in two or three 

 generations. It is therefore only where the environment is sim- 

 ple ; and especially on the outskirts of the continent, where migra- 

 tion and intermixture are more infrequent, that any constant and 

 normal association of traits may be anticipated. Take a single 

 example from many. We have always been taught to regard the 

 Teutonic peoples the Goths, Lombards, and Saxons as tawny- 

 haired, " large-limbed giants." History is filled with observations 

 to that effect from the earliest times. Our maps have already 

 led us to infer as much. Nevertheless, direct observations show 

 that tall stature and blondness are by no means constant com- 

 panions in the same person. In Scandinavia, Dr. Arbo asserts, I 

 think, that the tallest men are at the same time inclined to blond- 

 ness. In Italy, on the other edge of the continent, the same 

 combination is certainly prevalent.* Over in Russia, once more 

 on the outskirts of Europe, f the tall men are again found to be 



* Livi. Anthropometria Hilitare, pp. 74, 76. f Globus, vol. xlii, 1892, p. 337. 



