FIRST ORDINARY MEETING. 13 



people occur at this day in considerable numbers among the inhabitants 

 of the mountainous parts of the Barbary States. The Jews, almost 

 every where, present specimens of the blonde and brunette types. The 

 Ghelankis at the south end of the Caspian, the Nestorians of Persia, 

 and the Kurds of the highlands between Turkey and Persia, are- 

 partially blonde. Many of the Turcomans who live just east of the 

 Caspian Sea, though Tiirk by race and language, are blonde ; while 

 the Persians to the south and the Tadjiks to the east, though Indo- 

 European in speech, are brunette. Some of the Indo-European 

 tribes in Afghanistan, and on the upper Indus, afford specimens of 

 fair-haired and blue-eyed men. In short we may say that Xantho- 

 chroi occur from the Arctic Ocean to the Sahara, and from the Atlantic 

 to the Indus, in greater or smaller numbers, and that occasionally 

 beyond these confines, among the Chinese or Coreans, or even the 

 Indians of Northwest America, individuals may be met with, of 

 pure blood, who exhibit either light eyes or fair hair. For example, 

 the Spanish discoverers of the Thlinkeets of Alaska, expressly note 

 the fact that some of them had blue eyes. " Eran de color bianco y 

 habia muchos con ojos azules." They were of a white color and there 

 were many with blue eyes, says Perez. According to the Abbe" 

 David there is to be met with in Se"tchuan, one of the northwestern 

 provinces of China, an aboriginal race with light eyes and hair often 

 chestnut or yellowish. 



During the last twenty-five years considerable quantities of statis- 

 tics, relating to the colour of the hair, eyes, and skin, have been 

 collected in various countries. In Great Britain Dr. Beddoe's figures 

 show that the number of blondes increases as we go north ; in France 

 the fairest part of the population is in the north and north-east ; in 

 Belgium in the north ; in Gallicia, a part of Poland, the people are 

 fairer in the north. In Germany the observations made on school 

 children show that Schleswig-Holstein, the northernmost province, is 

 the fairest. The next fairest is not, as might be expected, the next 

 most northerly province, East Prussia, but Pomerania, and the third 

 in the list is Hanover. The geographical position of these provinces 

 naturally leads to the inference that the Scandinavian Peninsula is 

 the seat of the fairest population in the world. The blonde centre is 

 probably somewhere in the southern half of that peninsula, as the 

 Lapps in the north, though partly fair, are partly brunette. In every 



