Europe in early times from the Asiatic highlands. In England there is a
larger proportion of Nordic blood, because the Anglo-Saxons partially
exterminated the natives; but the old Mediterranean race, which had
made its way up the warm western coasts, still holds its own in
Cornwall, Wales, Ireland, and the Western Highlands; and within the last
hundred years, owing to frequent migrations, has mixed so thoroughly
with the Anglo-Saxon stock that the English are becoming darker in each
generation. This is not the result of a racial decay of the blonds, as
the American, Dr. Charles Woodruff, supposes, but is to be accounted for
by the fact that dark eyes seem to be a Mendelian dominant, and dark
hair a more potent character than light. The inhabitants of these
islands are nearly all long-headed, this being a characteristic of both
the Nordic and Mediterranean races. The round-headed invaders, who
perhaps brought with them the so-called Celtic languages at a remote
period, and imposed them upon the inhabitants, seem to have left no
other mark upon the population, though their type of head is prevalent
over a great part of France.

The ability of races to flourish in climates other than their own is a
question of supreme importance to historians and statesmen, and, it need
not be said, to emigrants. But it is only lately that it has been
studied scientifically, and the results are still tentative. German
ethnologists, of what we may call the _ædicephalous_ school, already
referred to, regard it as one of the tragedies of nature that the noble
Nordic race, to which they think they belong, dies out when it
penetrates southwards. In accordance with this law, the yellow-haired
Achæans decayed in Greece, the Lombards in North Italy, the Vandals in
Spain and Africa. After a few generations of life in a warm climate the
Aryan stock invariably disappears. We shall show reasons for thinking
that this theory is much exaggerated; but there is undoubtedly some