FAIR PEOPLE DISAPPEARING.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LI, Issue 112, 2 May 1908, Page 3

FAIR PEOPLE DISAPPEARING.

A JiACIAL PIZ/LK. The wane of th ■ i-iir complexion irt accepted as one of the facts of modern times. Professor Miason, of the Smithsonian Institute, lias estimated that it, will have vanished six centuries hence, (and, thmigli such i Calculation _ Can; (scarcely be ehc<' .d. many eminent ethonoiigists haw endorsed it. There is t\n interesting article in the Contemporary Kcview in whcli the matter is seriously tlise.ii'tsed. O>mp\e\'ioil., we' are told, has no \jlue ill itself but it is the visible sign of the peculiarities and chanactersl.ics which are grouped together under the term ot "constitution." "It cannot be an accident,'' says the writer, "that nearly all those conquering races which were colonise! s have lieen fair. Perhaps there is only one indisputable exception the Arab; for the tribes wliic.li furnished a large proportion of the ltonuiu armies earliest time, some were blonde. So it was with (he Spanish conquerors; one 'may see llaxen hail", blue eyes, 4uul even red cheeks in Costa Rica, Segovia, and I elsewhere 'not infrequently to this day. The list of blonde race ri includes thn t Hauls, Teutons, Slavs, C.reeks, Scandil navian>, and British in Kurope, Medcs, I Indian Aryans, and Afghans in Asia. The inclusion of the Asiatics is a little 1 surprising, but the writer of the article iu the Contemporary declares that it is fustiiied. Investigators liiave still t»v ii'md a full explanation of the special aetivitv nf the fair races. Famine, the. ..rowtli of population, and the. attacks of enemies may have set tliem moving, but the dark races mustliave been sub-, jeot to (he same kind of pressure from time to time. "Military enterprises have been a,s frequent', among the dark races as among the fair, but the great national movement* and migrations seem to have been confined almost wholly to the fair-skinned peoples. '.the write! overlooks tliie great colonising movements that sent the Polynesian, races to their present homes, but possibly he mav fiml in Ibe persistence of fall Polynesians even lo this day a sugges-. lion (hat the original colonisers of the PacJfie -were a blonde people. Perliap-i (he solution .of the problem is that rosV skin, yellow hair, and pale eyes denote a bodily .structure which enables men to resist the evil inlluences of climate, provation, ex-cess, unaccustomed food, and new circumstances jrcn-erally, _ wliile a i dead white skin and dark hair belong !to a structure which does' not carry. ; | theee advantages.