south, say from Normandy to Vienna. Even in these most brunette areas pure dark types are not very frequent. No such extremes occur as Italy and southern France present. The prevailing combination is of dark hair and grayish or hazel eyes. Such is particularly the case among the western Irish and southern Welsh.[1] So striking is the brunetteness in the latter case that we find an early writer in this century, the Rev. T. Price, ascribing the prevalence of black hair in Glamorganshire to the common use of coal as fuel. Without accepting this hypothesis, we may be certain of the strongly accentuated brunetteness of the peasantry hereabouts. The accompanying Welsh type, strongly brunette, with black hair, is a good example. The opposite extreme of blondness corresponds, as nearly as we can judge, to the continental populations in the latitude of Cologne. Light hair and brown or blue eyes become common. This is not as fair as the pure Teutonic race in Scandinavia. We shall probably not be far wrong in the statement that the extremes
Scottish Highlands. | ||
Tall, Lighter Type. Moray. | "A Good Specimen of the Little Dark Race." Argyleshire. |
in the British Isles are about as far separated from one another as Berlin is from Vienna. In the darkest regions pure brunette types are more frequent than the blond by about fifteen per cent. In the eastern and northern counties, on the other hand, the blondes are in a majority by an excess of about five per cent. Everywhere, however,
- ↑ The recent work of Haddon and Browne, published in the Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy, Dublin, since 1893, on the western Irish, is our best recent authority on this people.