FAIR PEOPLE DISAPPEARING.

Taranaki Herald, Volume LIV, Issue 13673, 11 April 1908, Page 7

FAIR PEOPLE DISAPPEARING.

A RACIAL PUZZLE.

• The wane of 'the fair ■ complexion is accepted as one of the facts of modern times. Professor Mason, of the Smith-, sonian Institute,, has estimated that it will have vanished; six centuries hence, and, though suebV a\ calculation can scarcely; be checked, many eminent ethnologists have endorsed it. There is an interesting ' article in the Contemporary Review, in which the matter is seriously discussed. Complexion, we are told, has no virtue in itself, but it is the visible sign of the peculiarities and characteristics which are grouped together under, t tftej.. term ' "cqnstitu-, tiom' A <f lt cannot; »l)e an accident;'* says the writer, "that nearly all those conquering races which were also colonisers have been fair. Perhaps there is only one indisputable * exception — the Arab ; for of the tribes which furnished a large .proportion of the Roman armies in the earliest time, some were blonde. So it with the Spanish conquerors; one may see flaxen hair, blue eyes, and even red cheeks in Costa Rica, Segovia, -ancl elsewhere not infrequently to this day." The list of blonde races includes Gauls, Teutons, Slavs, Greeks, Scandinavians, and British in Europe, Persians', Medes," Indian Aryans and Afghans in Asia. The inclusion of the Asiatics* is a little surprising, but the writer of the arti6le in tlje Contemporary declares that it is justified. Investigators have still to find a full explanation of the special activity of the fair races*. Famine, ;the growth of population, and the attacks of enemies may have set them moving ; . but the dark races must have been subjected to the same kinds of pressure f?qm time to time. Military enterprises have been as frequent among the dark races as among the fair, but the great national nSovements, and migrations seem to have been confined almost wholly to the fair-skinned peoples. The writer overlooks the great colonising movements that sent the Polynesian . races Jo their jpresent hbmes, but possiblyhe may find in the persistence of "fair" Polynesians even to this day a suggestion that the original colonisers of the Pacific were a Blonde people. Perhaps the solution. ,erf the problem is that rosy skin, yellow hair, and pale eyes denote a bedily structure which enables men to resist the evil influence's' of climate, privation, excess, unaccustomed food, and now circumstances generally, while a dead whits- sTfctß -aflcPdark nair belong to at 'structure which does not carry these advantages. f'..