Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 19.djvu/324

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310
THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

brownish-white skin, black or deep-brown eyes, black hair, mostly wavy or curly; their skulls vary much in proportions, though seldom extremely broad or narrow, while the profile is upright, the nose straight or aquiline, the lips less full than in other races. Fig. 23, a group of Swedes, represents the fair-whites, whose transparent skin, flaxen hair, and blue eyes may be seen as well, though not as often, in England as in Scandinavia or North Germany. The intermarriage of the dark and fair varieties, which has gone on since early times, has resulted in numberless varieties of brown-haired people, between fair and dark in complexion. But as to the origin and first home of the fair and dark races

Fig. 24.—Gypsy.

themselves, it is hard to form an opinion. Language does much toward tracing the early history of the white nations, but it does not clear up the difficulty of separating fair-whites from dark-whites. Both sorts have been living united by national language, as at this day German is spoken by the fair Hanoverian and the darker Austrian. Among Keltic people, the Scotch Highlanders often remind us of the tall, red-haired Gauls described in classical history, but there are also passages which prove that smaller darker Kelts like the modern Welsh and Bretons existed then as well. A mixture of the white and brown races seems to have largely formed the population of countries where they meet. The Moors of North Africa, and many so-called Arabs