118 ADAPTATION AND PROGRESS 
place in his discussion, such as geographical isolation,! social 
contact together with group struggle and selection,? migration, 
direct and indirect environmental influence,‘ consciousness of 
kind,® economic conditions,* and social, sexual and artificial 
selection.” 
Our author attacks the specific problem of environment ». race 
in explaining ethnic peculiarities and cultural products and con- 
cludes that environmental factors have been all too largely neg- 
lected by investigators in the past. ‘‘ At times,” he says, “ they 
rise paramount to all other circumstances.”® He shows, for 
example, how climate has determined the segregation of cotton 
mills about Lancashire; how such social phenomena as divorce, 
suicide and crime are the products of density of population, 
economic and cultural conditions, and these in turn of physical 
and social environment, rather than of race. A favorable geo- 
graphical environment encourages early marriages as in the case 
of Italy in contrast to Brittany; it favors the development of 
village and city life with social contacts resulting in increased 
individualism, liberty often descending to license and vice and 
political radicalism, — yet withal, progress, whereas the peoples 
relegated to geographic isolation, with their purer family life 
and greater stability of character are conservative and non- 
progressive. 
The phenomenon of the marvellous growth of cities during the 
past century is discussed with special reference to its effects on 
ethnic distribution. City dwellers are found on the whole to be 
shorter in stature, lighter in weight (especially in tenement 
districts), and also on the whole with a greater tendency to 
pigmentation than dwellers in the country." These facts have 
given rise to the theory of “ urban selection,” — pigmentation 
being considered to have some relation to vital force.” 
1 Races in Europe, pp. 56, 74 £., 139, 141, 232, 520. 
2 Ibid., pp. 1, 56. 8 [bid., p. 514. 
3 Tbid., p. 16. ° Ibid., pp. 520 ff. 
4 Ibid., Introduction, chs. XIX, XXI. 10 [bid., p. 533. 
5 Ibid., p. 2.  Tbid., pp. 551 f. 
§ [bid., pp. 338, 475. 4 Ibid., p. §57. 
7 Ibid., pp. 49 f£., 85 f£., 89, 201 f., 292, 398 f. 
