510 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



Jewish features and expression. So marked is this that Andree 

 mentions an instance where the negroes of the Gold Coast even dis- 

 tinguish between other whites and Jews by its means, saying not 

 " Here are three whites coming," but " Here are two whites and a 

 Jew." So marked a community of expression and appearance would 

 be, to an ordinary mind, an absolute proof of unity of race, but Pro- 

 fessor Ripley prefers to judge by the skull beneath, rather than by 

 the expression and features on the surface. He hints at some ob- 

 scure embryological process by which Jewish mothers can stamp 

 on their offspring the Ghetto expression, whatever be the racial 

 formation of skull. According to him, it would appear that noses 

 are more plastic in this regard than skulls. I do not quite see how 

 this would work out in detail. Are we to suppose that a pair of 

 snub-nosed converts to Judaism would produce offspring with the 

 characteristic Jewish nose because the lady convert had her imagi- 

 nation influenced by the hook-noses surrounding her? Are we to 

 suppose that round heads can only beget round heads, but that 

 snub noses can produce the hooked variety as a mere result of im- 

 agination? 



Mere expression one could understand could be produced by 

 sociological causes, and it is certainly my impression that Jews who 

 mix more with their fellow-citizens lose a good deal of the charac- 

 teristic Jewish expression, but that Jewish features should be in- 

 fluenced in this way few people would be prepared to allow. Jew- 

 ish " nostrility," as I have termed it, and the " Jew's eye," can not 

 be affected by change of environment. They can be affected, I 

 grant, by admixture with races snub-nosed or dull-eyed, but as they 

 have persisted throughout the ages they are themselves a striking 

 proof of the absence of such admixture. 



Altogether I remain unconvinced by Professor Ripley's argu- 

 ments as to any large admixture of alien elements among contem- 

 porary Jews as unvouched for by history, and not necessarily postu- 

 lated by anthropology. The broad skulls of the Jews, if they differ 

 from those of earlier date (of which Professor Ripley has produced 

 no evidence whatever), are due to the development of Jewish ca- 

 pacity, owing to their consistent attention to education and to the 

 conditions under which they have pursued the struggle for existence. 

 The persistence of Jewish features throughout the ages and the ex- 

 istence of an influential minority who are not allowed by Jewish law 

 to marry outside their race is further proof of the position for which 

 I have throughout contended. If there has -been a tolerably large 

 admixture of Jewish and alien blood throughout the Christian cen- 

 turies it has been by conversions to Christianity or Islam, not by 

 adoption of Judaism, and it is confirmed by history that the offspring 



