Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 52.djvu/624

604 agricultural counties about London, being even less than in the metropolis itself. On the other hand, the Anthropometric Committee of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, measuring more among the upper classes in London, found them to exceed both in height and weight the peasantry in Hertfordshire, near by. This need not disprove Dr. Beddoe's assertion. In fact, the contradictory evidence is very valuable for that reason. The only way to account for it is to suppose that the constant draft upon these suburban populations for their most powerful men, for service in the neighboring city as policemen, porters, firemen, and in other picked professions, has depleted the land of all its best specimens. Such an inflowing current always tends cityward. Everything points to the conclusion, on the other hand, that the final product of the continued residence of such sorted populations in the city is to divide them into the chosen few who succeed and rise socially, and the many who descend, in the social scale as well as in stature, until their line becomes extinct. As they differentiate thus, they migrate within the city. The few drift toward the West End, toward the Champs Elysées or Fifth Avenue, where they maintain the high physical standard of the quarter; the others gravitate no less irresistibly toward Cheapside and the Bowery.

We have seen thus far that evidence seems to point to an aggregation of the Teutonic long-headed population in the urban centers of Europe. Perhaps a part of the tall stature in some cities may be due to such racial causes. A curious anomaly now remains, however, to be noted. City populations appear to manifest a distinct tendency toward brunetteness—that is to say, they seem to comprise an abnormal proportion of brunette traits, as compared with the neighboring rural districts. The first notice of this is due to Mayr. who, studying some 760,000 school children in Bavaria, stumbled upon it unexpectedly. Although blondes were in a very decided majority in the kingdom as a whole, the cities all contained a noticeable preponderance of brunette traits. This tendency was strikingly shown to characterize the entire German Empire when its six million school children were examined under Virchow's direction. In twenty-five out of thirty-three of the larger cities were the brunette traits more frequent than in the country. In Metz alone was there a decided preponderance of blondes, due perhaps to the recent Germanization of Alsace-Lorraine as a result of political circumstances. Broadly viewed, all the larger cities, dating from the period prior to 1850, showed this brunette peculiarity in their school children.