It is not the pre-eminence of the blonde alone that appeals to the fancy in northwest-European countries: all over Europe we find the idea of racial purity, and of the existence of certain features inherent in each race that make it superior to all others; while it is assumed that the mixed, “mongrel” races are doomed to permanent inferiority. This notion prevails among ourselves with equal force, for we shake our heads gravely over the ominous influx of “inferior” races from eastern Europe. Inferior by heredity? No. Socially different? Yes, on account of the environment in which they have lived, and therefore different from ourselves, and not easily subject to change provided they are allowed to cluster together indefinitely. Equally strong is our fear of the mongrelization of the American people by intermixtures between the northwest-European and other European types. Scientific investigation does not countenance the assumption that in any one part of Europe a people of pure descent or of a pure racial type is found, and careful inquiry has failed completely to reveal any inferiority of mixed European types. TYPE AND RACE DO NOT COINCIDE In our imagination the local racial types of Europe have been identified with the modern nations, and thus the supposed hereditary characteristics of the races have been confused with national characteristics. An identification of racial type, of language, and of nationality has been made, that has gained an exceedingly strong hold on our imagination. In vain sober scientific thought has remonstrated against this identification; the idea is too firmly rooted. Even if it is true that the blond type is found at present pre-eminently among Teutonic people, it is not confined to them alone. Among the Finns, Poles, French, North Italians, not to speak of the North African Berbers and the Kurds of western Asia, there are many individuals of this type. The heavy-set, dark East-European type is common to many of the Slavic peoples of eastern Europe, to the Germans of Austria and southern Germany, to the North Italians, and to the French of the Alps and of central France. The Mediterranean type is spread widely over Spain, Italy, Greece, and the coast of Asia Minor, without regard to national boundaries. In western Europe, types are distributed in strata that follow one another from north to south,--in the north the blonde, in the center a dark, short-headed type, in the south the slightly built Mediterranean type. _National boundaries in central Europe, on the other hand, run north and south: and so we find the northern French, Belgian, Hollander, German, and Russian to be about the same in type and descent; the central French, South German, Swiss, North Italian, Austrian, Servian, and central Russian, to be all the same variety of man; and the southern French, to be closely related to the types of the eastern and western Mediterranean area._