certain Prussian cities, which contain more than twice as many dark as there are light traits; and in Bavaria, as we have seen, the actual condition is exactly the reverse of what might have been statistically expected.

Austria offers confirmation of the same tendency toward brunetteness in twenty-four out of its thirty-three principal cities. Farther south, in Italy, it was noted much earlier that cities. contained fewer blondes than were common in the rural districts round about. The rule has been corroborated for the greater part of the country, since Livi finds that even in the thirty-two darkest provinces, where towns tending toward the mean for the country should contain more blondes than the suburban districts, twenty-one of the capital cities show the reverse relation, while only nine conform to statistical probability. For Switzerland the evidence is conflicting. Applying the rule to the cities of the British Isles, Dr. Beddoe finds it to hold good especially in the color of the hair. Ammon in his detailed researches discovers a tendency toward brunetteness in the cities of Baden. So uniform is the testimony that those who, like Lapouge, have ascribed the long headedness of city populations to a predominance of the Teutonic racial type now acknowledge this tendency toward brunetteness, in spite, in this case, of ethnic probabilities to the contrary. The relative frequency, in fact, of long headedness and coincidently of brunette characteristics induced Lapouge to designate this combination the "foreordained urban type." In conclusion, let us add, not as additional testimony, for the data are too defective, that among five hundred American students at the Institute of Technology in Boston, roughly classified, there were nine per cent of pure brunette type among those of country birth and training, while among those of urban birth and parentage the percentage of such brunette type rose as high as fifteen. The arbitrary limit of twenty thousand inhabitants was here adopted as distinguishing city from suburban populations. Dark hair was noticeably more frequent in the group drawn from the larger towns.

It is not improbable that there is in brunetteness, in the dark hair and eye, some indication of vital superiority. If this were so, it would serve as a partial explanation for the social phenomena

which we have been at so much pains to describe. If in the same community there were a slight vital advantage in brunetteness, we should expect to find that type slowly aggregating in the cities; for it requires energy and courage, physical as well as mental, not only to break the ties of home and migrate, but also to maintain one's self afterward under the stress of urban life. Selection thus would be doubly operative. It would determine the character both of the urban immigrants and, to coin a phrase, of the urban persistents as well. The idea is worth developing a bit.

Eminent authority stands sponsor for the theorem that pigmentation in the lower animals is an important factor in the great struggle for survival. One proof of this is that albinos in all species are apt to be defective in keenness of sense, thereby being placed at a great disadvantage in the competition for existence with their fellows. Pigmentation, especially in the organs of sense, seems to be essential to their full development. As a result, with the coincident disadvantage due to their conspicuous color, such albinos are ruthlessly weeded out by the processes of natural selection; their nonexistence in a state of nature is noticeable. Darwin and others cite numerous examples of the defective senses of such nonpigmented animals. Thus, in Virginia, the white pigs of the colonists perished miserably by partaking of certain poisonous roots which the dark-colored hogs avoided by reason of keener sense discrimination. In Italy, the same exemption of black sheep from accidental poisoning, to which their white companions were subject, has been noted. Animals so far removed from one another as the horse and the rhinoceros

are said to suffer from a defective sense of smell when they are of the albino type. It is a fact of common observation that white cats with blue eyes are quite often deaf. Other examples might be cited of similar import. They all tend to justify Alfred Russell Wallace's conclusion that pigmentation, if not absolutely necessary, at least conduces to acuteness of sense; and that where abundantly present it is often an index of vitality. This eminent naturalist even ventures to connect the aggressiveness of the male sex among the lower animals with its brilliancy of coloring.

Applying these considerations to man, evidence is not entirely wanting to support De Candolle's thesis that "pigmentation is an index of force." Disease often produces a change in the direction of blondness, as Dr. Beddoe has observed; asserting, as he does, that this trait in general is due to a defect of secretion. The case of the negro, cited by Ogle, whose depigmentation was accompanied by a loss of the sense of smell, is a pertinent one. The phenomenon of light-haired childhood and of grayhaired senility points to the same conclusion. A million soldiers observed during our Civil War afforded data for Baxter's assertion that the brunette type, on the whole, opposed a greater resistance to disease, and offered more hope of recovery from injuries in the field. Darwin long ago suggested a relation of pigmentation to the similar resistant power of the dark races in the tropics, although he had to deal with much conflicting evidence. Dr. Beddoe finds in Bristol that the dark-haired children. are more tenacious of life, and asserts a distinct superiority of the brunette type in the severe competitions induced by urban life. Havelock Ellis marshals some interesting testimony to the end that the apparently greater pigmentation in woman is correlated with its greater resistant power in the matter of disease. More recently Pfitzner has investigated the same subject, although it is not certain, as we have already observed, that the greater brunetteness of his Alsatian women is a phenomenon of race rather than of sex. It is not for us to settle the matter here and now. The solution belongs to the physiologist. As statisticians it behooves us to note facts, leaving choice of explanations to others more competent to judge. It must be said in conclusion, however, that present tendencies certainly point in the direction of some relation between pigmentation and general physiological and mental vigor. If this be established, it will go far to explain some of these curious differences between country and city which we have noted.

From the preceding formidable array of testimony, it appears that the tendency of urban populations is certainly not toward the pure blond, long-headed, and tall Teutonic type. The phenomenon of urban selection is something more complex than

a mere migration of a single racial element in the population toward the cities. The physical characteristics of townsmen are too contradictory for ethnic explanations alone. A process of physiological and social rather than of ethnic selection seems to be at work in addition. To be sure, the tendencies are slight; we are not even certain of their universal existence at all. We are merely watching for their verification or disproof. There is, however, nothing improbable in the phenomena we have noted. Naturalists have always turned to the environment for the final solution of many of the great problems of nature. In this case we have to do with one of the most sudden and radical changes of environment known to man. Every condition of city life, mental as well as physical, is at the polar extreme from those which prevail in the country. To deny that great modifications in human structure and functions may be effected by a change from one to the other is to gainsay all the facts of natural history.

XXX

DEGENERATION 1

ETIOLOGY

We have recognized the effect of diseases in these fin-de-siècle literary and artistic tendencies and fashions as well as in the susceptibility of the public with regard to them, and we have succeeded in maintaining that these diseases are degeneracy and hysteria. We have now to inquire how these maladies of the day have originated, and why they appear with such extraordinary frequency at the present time.

Morel, the great investigator of degeneracy, traces this chiefly to poisoning. A race which is regularly addicted, even without excess, to narcotics and stimulants in any form (such as fermented alcoholic drinks, tobacco, opium, hasheesh, arsenic), which partakes of tainted foods (bread made with bad corn), which absorbs organic poisons (marsh fever, syphilis, tuberculosis, goiter), begets degenerate descendants, who, if they remain exposed to the same influences, rapidly descend to the lowest degrees of degeneracy, to idiocy, to dwarfishness, etc. That the poisoning of civilized peoples continues and increases at a very rapid rate is widely attested by statistics. The consumption of tobacco has risen in France from 0.8 kilogram per head in 1841 to 1.9 kilograms in 1890. The corresponding figures for England are 13 and 26 ounces; for Germany, 0.8 and 1.5 kilograms. The consumption of alcohol during the same period has risen in Germany (1844) from 5.45 quarts to (1867) 6.86 quarts; in England from 2.01 liters to 2.64 liters; in France from 1.33 liters to 4 liters. The increase in the consumption of opium and hasheesh is still greater, but we need not concern ourselves about that,

1 From Degeneration, by Max Nordau, Book I, chap. iv; Book V, chap. i, pp. 540-545 (copyright, 1895, by D. Appleton & Co., New York).