of twenty-two departments each. The groups indicate the fair, intermediate fair, intermediate dark, and dark, whether of eyes, of hair, or of both combined.

Distribution of the colour of the eyes in France; from Topinard.
The eighty-eight Departments (Alsace-Lorraine added and
counted as one) are divided into four equal groups.

The line of separation between the departments where the blonds predominate, and those which have a preponderance of darks, extends irregularly from the Alps to the Breton peninsula. This line also corresponds with a fair degree of accuracy to that

which separates the people of high stature from those of low stature, the former being to the north-east, the latter to the south-west.

The maximum of frequency of blonds is met with partly along the shores of the English Channel and partly along the north-east frontier. This fact coincides with history. One knows that the blonds came by sea and by land, but always from the north.

It

is also in agreement with the colour-maps constructed from statistics of the hair and eye colours of over ten million school children in Germany, Austria, Belgium, and Switzerland. The fairest children occur in the

Resultant of the two preceding Maps; from Topinard.

north, and, speaking in general terms, they darken as one proceeds south and west; thus the darkest children are to be found on the confines of Italy and France. There are, however, several dark "islands" in Central Germany, especially in Bohemia,

and numerous light "islands" in the extreme south of this large area.

The maximum of frequency of the darks is seen along the Mediterranean coast, in Corsica, along the Pyrenees, and also in Auvergne. This conforms perfectly to what is known of the primitive location of a dark population in the basin and islands of the Mediterranean before the Aryan invasion. From other sources we know that there was a mixed dark population in France before the fair barbarians came from the north-east to overlord the earlier inhabitants of France; but colour maps alone do not serve to distinguish between these earlier peoples. A further analysis will be made when dealing with head-form.

The map of combined hair and eye colours marks the descent of the fair invaders down the valley of the Rhone, in the direction of Upper Italy. Other irregularities of distribution and the various "islands," such as the departments of Vendée (75) and CharenteInférieure (36) in the west, Tarn (54) and Tarn et Garonne (59) in the south, and Jura (8) and Drôme (22) in the east, can be explained by local historical events. Topinard asks whether the fair "island" of Charente-Inférieure is due to the English, to the Protestants around La Rochelle (the majority of whom should be fair), or to the immigration of the Alans? The Alans, or Alani, were Scythian people, with red hair and grey eyes, who joined themselves

with the Vandals. They occupied the middle course of the Loire in 451 A.D.* Collignon, however, does not find Charente-Inférieure particularly fair, and he cannot satisfy himself that any trace exists of the Alans, about whom we know really very little.

Topinard fully recognizes that the departments are purely administrative divisions which have no ethnological significance, but it is very convenient to take the departments as statistical units, as they are of a sufficient size to give the broad features of the distribution of hair and eye colouration. The significance of the distribution has, of course, no relation whatever to the departments themselves. Here also, as in Britain, a more detailed survey in selected districts will give most interesting and suggestive results, the interpretation of which can best be worked out by a careful study of the local history, both prehistoric and documental. For France such detailed anthropological investigations have been carried out by Dr. R. Collignon in a very thorough and suggestive manner. His methods are so valuable that a chapter will be devoted to an abstract of his studies in the Dordogne district.

* G. DE MORTILLET, Formation de la Nation Française, 1897, p. 122.