BLOODGROUPS AND INBREEDING 437 



cards for each person investigated. In several rural places we met in the 

 population a certain resistance on religious or other grounds to sacrifice a 

 simple drop of blood. Moreover the collaboration of the authorities is often 

 insufficient. This is the reason why many interesting places had to be 

 abandoned and why we need years of work for the same material which can 

 be collected in our Dutch Indian Colonies during a couple of months. 



Figure 1 gives an idea of the bloodgroup distribution of two groups of per- 

 sons resorting from the entire country. The difference in the percentage of 

 bloodgroup B, the group which especially calls our attention, has to be 

 attributed to a greater intermingling in the student material with foreign 

 elements. Not less than 50 per cent of these students from the different 

 universities had one or more ascendents in foreign countries; most of them 

 in France (emigres and refugies) and in Germany. 1 In the more sessile 

 population, to which the greater part of the investigated prisoners belongs, 

 such international relations fail. 



It never will be possible, as shall appear afterwards, to establish the exact 

 mean percentage of bloodgroup B in the Nether land population as a whole. 

 Still one may say that 9.6 per cent of bloodgroup B would be rather high, 

 taking into consideration the rough result of more than 30,000 persons tested 

 in the whole country. 



Considering the results obtained in different provinces, it can be established 

 that the mean percentage of bloodgroup B in the southern part of the prov- 

 ince of Limburg, the province of Zeeland and the western part of Brabant — 

 thus, generally speaking, in the southern provinces — is slightly higher than 

 in the northern provinces, where more nordic mixture prevails. Still it has 

 to be kept in mind, that the nordic race spread from Friesland along the sea- 

 coast to the Zeeland-isles. It would be an easy hypothesis to attribute the 

 relative high percentage of B in the province of Zeeland together with the 

 dark pigmentation to a Mediterranean influence (Spanish war 16th-17th 

 century), if this hypothesis had not been rejected by anthropologists of high 

 standing. One has to keep in mind that already in prehistorical times a 

 southern stream of darkhaired alpine and mixed type may have invaded this 

 part of our country. 2 



Particularly the results of our rural local investigations give me reason 



1 In the bloodgroup investigations amongst students (Proc. Royal Acad. Sc, vol. 33, 

 1930), it has been stated that there exists no correlation between bloodgroups and other 

 anthropological traits (head index, eye colour, hair colour), when taking into account the 

 probable error. The same has recently been stated in one of our local investigations 

 (Proc. Acad. Sc, vol. 35, 1932). 



2 W. Scheidt, 1930, Zeitschr. f. Morph. und Anthr., vol. 28. 



