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Human Complexion and its Causes . 
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IV. HUMAN COMPLEXION AND ITS CAUSES. 
S HE varying colour and texture of the human skin have 
long been a vexed question among anthropologists and 
ethnologists, and the common explanation, which as- 
cribes all these differences to latitude, breaks down on the 
most moderate scrutiny. It is easy to say that the Negro is 
black because he lives on the Equator, and that the Moor, 
the Spaniard, the Frenchman, the Englishman, and the 
Norwegian are progressively fairer of complexion as their 
dwelling-places approach the Polar regions. But if we look 
to the western side of the Atlantic we find no such series of 
changes. The aborigines of America, whether in ardtic, 
temperate, or tropical regions, vary little in colour, and it 
may safely be said that under the Equator, in Brazil, they 
are not the darkest. Even in the Old World we meet with 
fadts quite inconsistent with the “ latitude ” theory. The 
Swede and Norwegian are very light-coloured, but to the 
north of them live the swarthy Lapps and Greenlanders. 
The Maori, living in a climate not unlike that of Britain, is 
as dark as the natives of Tahiti or Hawaii within the tropics. 
In Europe we might even be led to suppose that colour was 
a question of longitude. If we travel from France east- 
wards, we find in Germany a decidedly lighter complexion 
prevailing. But if we continue our journey eastwards we 
find dark hair and eyes, and even a dark tone of complexion, 
among the Bohemians and Poles. If we enter Asia we find 
the yellow Mongol race varying little in tint from the South 
of China, and even from Anam to the frontiers of Russia. 
These instances, which are given merely as specimens 
selected out of a great number, are surely more than enough 
to show that human complexion is not a function of 
latitude. 
Another theory is that the inhabitants of mountainous 
regions are fairer than those who inhabit the plains, the 
latitude in each case being the same. We see scant founda- 
tion for this view. The Norwegian mountaineer is no darker 
than his neighbour the Swede, and both of them are, if 
anything, fairer than the Russian, the native of one of the 
flattest countries in the world. In the British Islands dark 
eyes, hair, and complexions are quite as common in the 
mountains of Wales and Scotland as in the most level parts 
