THE RACIAL GEOGRAPHY OF EUROPE. 



3*3 



to determine whether this were due to climate alone, or to the defect- 

 ive nutrition which too often attends a poverty of environment. It is 

 a well-recognized law in the geographical distribution of lower forms 

 of life that two hundred and fifty feet increase in altitude is equiva- 

 lent to one degree's remove in latitude from the equator. If this be 

 true, applied to man, it would lead us to expect a steady increase of 

 blondness toward the north of Europe, a fact which all our maps 

 have substantiated fully. Experience in colonizing Africa to-day indi- 

 cates that such adaptation of the Teutonic race to a northern climate 

 constitutes a serious bar to its re-entry into the equatorial regions.* 

 May not this change physiologically be correlated in some way with 

 the modified pigmentation? We should assume, in other words, that 

 as the primitive long-headed type of the stone age gradually spread 

 over northern Europe, environmental influences slowly, very slowly, 

 through scores of generations, would lead this subvariety to emerge. 

 Its differentiation would then be commensurate with the distance 

 from its original southern center of migration whether a direct 

 product of environment or merely indirectly through natural selec- 

 tion is not for us to determine as yet. 



Climate as an explanation for the derived blondness of the Teu- 

 tonic race is, however, not sufficient by itself to account for the 

 phenomenon. It neglects a significant fact on which we laid empha- 

 sis in an earlier chapter, viz., that blondness not only decreases as we 

 proceed southward from Scandinavia, but in an easterly direction as 

 well. In other words, the Kussians at the latitude of Norway and 

 Sweden are far more brunette in type. How shall we reconcile this 

 with our environmental hypothesis? In the first place, the hordes 

 which speak the Slavic languages are all comparatively recent immi- 

 grants in Europe; they are physically allied to the broad-headed 

 Alpine type. This we shall explain in a succeeding paragraph. 

 For this reason, comparisons between Scandinavia and the lands 

 directly east of it are vitiated at once. But there is yet another 

 reason why we may expect these Teutons to be notable even in their 

 own latitude by reason of their blondness. It is this; that the trait 

 has for some reason become so distinctive of a dominant race all over 

 Europe that it has been rendered susceptible to the influence of arti- 

 ficial selection. Thus a powerful agent is allied to climate to exag- 

 gerate what may once have been an insignificant trait. Were there 

 space we might adduce abundant evidence to prove that the upper 

 classes in France, Germany, Austria, and the British Isles are dis- 

 tinctly lighter in hair and eyes than the peasantry, f The classical 



* Popular Science Monthly, vol. xlviii, 1896, p. 785. 



f Von Holder, 1876, p. 16 ; Beddoe, 1870, p. 177, and 1885, p. 187, comparing differ- 

 ent classes in Cork, Ireland ; Taylor, 1889, p. 244. 



