relating to the black men, or to those desgnated by the old brown-black word sweart, and in some cases, perhaps, even by the old word dun.
The evidence of brown people of the Wendish race may, however, be carried further by the comparison of surviving names in North-East Germany with similar surviving names in England. Those of Wendlesbury, Wandsworth (Wendelesworth), Windsor (Wendlesore), find their parallels in names in the old Wendish country of Mecklenburg, where similar names are to be found—such as Wanden, the name of a province and place on the border of ancient Wendland, and similar names in Brunswick, to which some of the Wends probably migrated. The name Wendland also survives in Hanover, where a remnant of the Wendish language died out only two centuries ago. In these names we discern a connection of the places with the Wends, who are at the present time the darkest people of Northern Germany. They were Slavs, whose line of migration in some far-distant era was from the country around the sources of the river Oder, down the wide valley of that river in Silesia to the Baltic coast of Mecklenburg and Pomerania.[1] This migration is marked at the present time by a greater percentage of people of the brunette type[2] in this district than prevails on its eastern or western sides, where fusion with other fairer-coloured races has been going on since the dawn of history. Whereas the country east and west of the valley of the Oder was found by the German Ethnological Survey to contain from 5 to 10 per cent. of brunettes among the present population, the country which marks the migration of the ancient Wends to the Mecklenburg coast contained 11 to 15 per cent. From this evidence and that of the complexion of the Wends of Saxony at the present time we are warranted in considering the ancient Wends to have been brunettes, or to have comprised tribes who were. It is on account of
