FIRST ORDINARY MEETING. 11 



or grey, or green, to a more or less dark brown. Fair hair, and blue, 

 green, or grey eyes, are never found except in conjunction with a 

 white skin. The yellow hair reported as seen in some countries in 

 conjunction with a dark skin, is the result of the use of a bleaching 

 agent. Light eyes may occur with dark hair and a fair skin, and 

 dark eyes with a fair skin and fair hair. The great majority of man- 

 kind have dark eyes, dark hair, and a more or less dark skin, and 

 Huxley's Xanthochroi, or the blonde whites of Northern Europe, are 

 the race that departs farthest from the common type. 



According to Professor Huxley, there must once have been some- 

 where an unmixed blonde white race, by mixing with which the 

 Australioids of the Mediterranean region and Great Britain became 

 blanched to their present hue. There is not, however, what one 

 would think there ought to be on that theory, any country or part of 

 a country inhabited only by blondes. Probably the country with 

 the greatest proportion of fair whites in it, is Southern Sweden ; 

 but here there is no inconsiderable admixture of men of the dark 

 white race. On the contrary, there are countries inhabited solely by 

 Melanochroi or dark whites. Such for example are Persia and 

 Northern Arabia. These facts, namely, that there is no tribe or 

 nation of unmixed blondes, while there are some of unmixed brunette 

 whites, would seem to indicate, that the fairness of the people in the 

 native country of the white race, is due to climatic causes, which 

 produce their maximum effect in those parts where there are most 

 blondes. 



At first sight nothing appears plainer than that complexion is a 

 result of climate. 



The very dark races are near the equator, the light-colored ones in 

 the temperate zones. The explanation seems to be at least as old as 

 Homer that darkness of skin results from the intensity of the sun's 

 rays. In his poems the term ^Ethiopes, meaning burnt faces, the 

 root of our word Ethiopian, is used to designate an African tribe. 

 But a very slight extension of our knowledge shows that this theory 

 does not explain the facts. Side by side in the same country, as, for 

 example, India, we find races of differing color who, apparently, have 

 occupied the same soil for many centuries. On the forty-fourth 

 parallel of latitude, which runs a little north of this city, we find, in 

 the old world, the European brunette, the blonde Circassian, and the 

 yellow Mongol, while on this continent we have the brown reddish 



