is necessary, the brute disappearing at the least suspicion of danger.
Hunting by "jack" is the usual method pursued, for the light seems to
charm the creature, so that he may be more easily detained until a
properly directed bullet speedily puts an end to his existence.
A professional alligator hunter, or a "'gator man," as he is called,
leads a life full of adventure, but his business is upon the wane,
since the fad for alligator leather is being pushed aside to make way
for something later and more novel. Nevertheless, a description of his
outfit may not be uninteresting.
A most important adjunct to this outfit is the man who usually
accompanies the 'gator man upon his expeditions. He might properly be
called the silent partner, for his duty is to instantly and silently
obey the different hand signals, meaning "To the right," "To the
left," "Stop," "Back," "Hurry," "Forward," "Spurt," "Slow," given by
the hunter, while standing erect in the bow of the boat, when out with
the "jack." Indeed, upon his alertness depends much of the success or
failure of the night's work.
The other tools used by the 'gator man are a light, strong boat, a
pair of light oars and a broad-bladed paddle with a four-foot handle,
neatly coiled rope, a jack lamp furnished with a powerful reflector,
an axe, a long, keen-bladed hunting knife, two guns (twelve-bore
breech-loaders, for a heavy charge at one delivery is absolutely
necessary), bags of ammunition, some strong chains, rawhide rope, and
a 'gator pole. This last-mentioned "tool" is a stout pole about ten
feet long, armed with a heavy hook of quarter-inch iron, bearing a
barbed shank of two inches or more, and it is used for hauling the
dead alligators from the bottom, for the creatures sink as soon as
killed.
The brilliant rays from the "jack" reveal a curious and a grewsome
sight when thrown upon a bank or island upon which a group of the
creatures have congregated. The shining waters of the swamp, so still
and black at that hour of midnight; the hideous tangle of huge gray
forms, as a dozen or more alligators, fairly intoxicated by the gleam
of the mysterious light, steadfastly watch its incomprehensible
presence. Gazing intently, their evil eyes blood-red in the glare from
the powerful reflector, some lie motionless, others roar and hiss and
snort with thrilling fierceness as the mystery deepens, incessantly
arching their bodies, then alternately depressing them to the ground.
Still others, crawling from beneath their companions, scuffle angrily
to the front, and stand with jaws partly open--now and then slowly
inflating their lungs, until their throats and sides puff out like
bellows. Yet, strange to say, instinct seems to warn the mother
alligator, for there she may be seen quietly creeping away with her
young.
Then, the loud reports from the guns, and the mystery is dispelled!
The island is deserted, and the work of raising the successfully shot
saurians begins.
* * * * *
Boards of rural engineering, syndicates of specialists
organized in several of the countries of northern Europe to
look after drainage and irrigation, have rendered great
services to the populations of the country districts. With
their aid 591 villages in Alsace-Lorraine were provided with
water between 1881 and 1895, and 516 communes in Baden have
been benefited by their assistance. The expense of the
improvement has not exceeded $6.61 (33 francs) per
inhabitant. The Agricultural Bureau in Prussia has in the
past five years drawn the plans and directed the work of 554
hydraulic syndicates, covering a total surface of more than
600,000 acres. A numerous body of these agricultural
engineers is formed every year in Germany, 517 students
having pursued the course of the section of rural
engineering in 1893 in the agronomical institutes of Bonn
and Berlin alone.
It is generally accepted that the spider is a solitary
animal, that will tolerate no companions, even the male
being in danger of being devoured by his female. But a
spider--the _Stregodyphus gregarius_--is described as living
in the Transvaal in communities, including males and
females, young and old. The nests are sometimes voluminous
and have partitions and numerous passages running through
them. The spiders usually escape observation by wrapping
themselves in dry leaves that hang from stems.
THE RACIAL GEOGRAPHY OF EUROPE.
A SOCIOLOGICAL STUDY.
(_Lowell Institute Lectures, 1896._)
BY WILLIAM Z. RIPLEY, PH. D.,
ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF SOCIOLOGY, MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF
TECHNOLOGY; LECTURER IN ANTHROPO-GEOGRAPHY AT COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY.
SUPPLEMENT.--THE JEWS (_continued_).
Tradition has long divided the Jewish people into two distinct
branches: the Sephardim, or southern, and the Ashkenazim, or north,
European. Mediæval legend among the Jews themselves traced the descent
of the first from the tribe of Judah; the second, from that of
Benjamin. The Sephardim are mainly the remnants of the former Spanish
and Portuguese Jews. They constitute in their own eyes an aristocracy
of the nation. They are found primarily to-day in Africa; in the
Balkan states, where they are known as Spagnuoli; less purely in
France and Italy. A small colony in London and Amsterdam still holds
itself aloof from all communion and intercourse with its brethren. The
Ashkenazim branch is numerically far more important, for the German,
Russian, and Polish Jews comprise over nine tenths of the people, as
we have already seen in our preceding article.
Early observers all describe these two branches of the Jews as very
different in appearance. Vogt, in his Lectures on Man, assumes the
Polish type to be descended from Hindu sources, while the Spanish
alone he held to be truly Semitic. Weisbach[11] gives us the best
description of the Sephardim Jew as to-day found at Constantinople. He
is slender in habit, he says; almost without exception the head is
"exquisitely" elongated and narrow, the face a long oval; the nose
hooked and prominent, but thin and finely chiseled; hair and eyes
generally dark, sometimes, however, tending to a reddish blond. This
rufous tendency in the Oriental Jew is emphasized by many observers.
Dr. Beddoe[12] found red hair as frequent in the Orient as in Saxon
England, although later results do not fully bear it out.[13] This
description of a reddish Oriental type corresponds certainly to the
early representations of the Saviour; it is the type, in features,
perhaps, rather than hair, painted by Rembrandt--the Sephardim in
Amsterdam being familiar to him, and appealing to the artist in
preference to the Ashkenazim type. This latter is said to be
characterized by heavier features in every way. The mouth, it is
alleged, is more apt to be large, the nose thickish at the end, less
often clearly Jewish, perhaps. The lips are full and sensual, offering
an especial contrast to the thin lips of the Sephardim. The complexion
is swarthy oftentimes, the hair and eyes very constantly dark, without
the rufous tendency which appears in the other branch. The face is at
the same time fuller, the breadth corresponding to a relatively short
and round head.
Does this contrast of the traditional Sephardim and Ashkenazim facial
types correspond to the anthropometric criteria by means of which we
have analyzed the various populations of Europe? And, first of all, is
there the difference of head form between the two which our
descriptions imply?[14] And, if so, which represents the primitive
Semitic type of Palestine? The question is a crucial one. It involves
the whole matter of the original physical derivation of the people,
and the rival claims to purity of descent of the two branches of the
nation. In preceding papers we have learned that western Asia is quite
uniformly characterized by an exceeding broad-headedness, the cephalic
index--that is to say, the breadth of the head in percentage of the
length from front to back--often rising to 86. This is especially
marked in Asia Minor, where some of the broadest and shortest crania
in the world are to be found. The Armenians, for example, are so
peculiar in this respect that their heads appear almost deformed, so
flattened are they at the back. A head of the description appears in
the case of our Jew from Ferghanah on our second portrait page, 344.
On the other hand, the peoples of African or negroid derivation form a
radical contrast, their heads being quite long and narrow, with
indices ranging from 75 to 78. This is the type of the living Arab
to-day. Its peculiarity appears in the prominence of the occipital
region in our Arab and other African portraits. Scientific research
upon these Arabs has invariably yielded harmonious results. From the
Canary Islands,[15] all across northern Africa,[16] to central Arabia
itself,[17] the cephalic indices of the nomadic Arabs agree closely.
They denote a head form closely allied to that of the long-headed
Iberian races, typified in the modern Spaniards, south Italians, and
Greeks. It was the head form of the ancient Phoenicians and Egyptians
also, as has recently been proved beyond all question.[18] Thus does
the European Mediterranean type shade off in head form, as in
complexion also, into the primitive anthropological type of the negro.
The situation being thus clearly defined, it should be relatively easy
to trace our modern Jews, if, indeed, as has so long been assumed,
they have remained a pure and undefiled race during the course of
their incessant migrations. We should be able to trace their origin if
they possess any distinctive head form, either to the one continent or
the other, with comparative certainty.
-------------------------+--------------------+----------+------------
AUTHORITY. | Place. | Number. | Cephalic
| | | Index.
-------------------------+--------------------+----------+------------
Lombroso, 1894 a |Turin, Italy. | 112 | 82.0
Weisbach, '77 |Balkan states. | 19 | 82.2
Majer and Kopernicki, '77|Galicia. | 316 | 83.6
Blechmann, '82 |W. Russia. | 100 | 83.2
Stieda, '83 (Dybowski) |Minsk, Russia. | 67 | 82.2
Ikof, '84 |Russia. | 120 | 83.2
Ikof, '84 |Constantinople. |17 crania | 74.5
Ikof, '84 |Crimea. |30 crania | 83.3
| | (Karaim).|
Majer and Kopernicki,'85 |Galicia. | 100 | 81.7
Jacobs, '90 |England. | 363 | 80.0
Jacobs, '90 |England (Sephardim).| 51 |
Talko-Hyrncewicz, '92 |Lithuania. | 713 |
Chantre, '95 |Caucasia. | 34 | 85.0
Weissenberg, '95 |South Russia. | 100 | 82.5
Weissenberg, '95 |South Russia. |50 women. | 82.4
Glück, '96 |Bosnia (Spagnuoli). | 55 | 80.1
Livi, '96 |Italy. | 34 | 81.6
Elkind, '97 |Poland. | 325 |{Men, 81.9
| | |{Women, 82.9
Deniker, '98 |Daghestan. | 19 | 87.0
-------------------------+--------------------+----------+------------
During the last quarter of a century about twenty-five hundred Jews
have submitted their heads to scientific measurement. These have
naturally for the most part been taken from the Great Russian and
Polish branch; a few observers, as Lombroso, Ikof, Jacobs, Glück, and
Livi, have taken observations upon a more or less limited number from
southern Europe. For purposes of comparison we have reproduced in our
footnote a summary of all the results obtained thus far. Inspection of
the table shows a surprising uniformity. Ikof's limited series of
Spagnuoli from Constantinople, and that of the Jews from Caucasia and
Daghestan, are the only ones whose cephalic index lies outside the
limits of 80 to 83. In other words, the Jews, wherever found in
Europe, betray a remarkable similarity in head form, the crania being
considerably broader than among the peoples of Teutonic descent. As we
know, the extremes of head form in Europe, measured by the cephalic
index, extend from 74 to 89; we thus observe that the Jews take a
place rather high in the European series. They are about like the
northern French and southern Germans. More important still, they seem
to be generally very closely akin in head form to the people among
whom they reside. Thus, in Russia and Poland scarcely an appreciable
difference exists in this respect between Jews and Christians. The
same is true in Turin, while in the direction of Asia our Jews are as
bullet-headed as even the most typical Armenians and Caucasians round
about them.
[Illustration: ARAB. Index, 76.
MUSSULMAN, TUNIS. Index, 75.
JEW, TUNIS. Index, 75.
AFRICAN SEMITIC TYPES.]
This surprising similarity of head form between the Jews of North and
South Europe bears hard upon the long-accepted theory that the
Sephardim is dolichocephalic, thereby remaining true to the original
Semitic type borne to-day by the Arabs. It has quite universally been
accepted that the two branches of the Jews differed most materially in
head form. From the facial dissimilarity of the two a correlative
difference in head form was a gratuitous inference. Dr. Beddoe
observes that in Turkey the Spagnuoli "seemed" to him to be more
dolichocephalic. A few years later Barnard Davis (1867) "suspected" a
diversity, but had only three Italian skulls to judge from, so that
his testimony counts for little. Then Weisbach (1877) referred to the
"exquisitely" long heads of the Spagnuoli, but his data show a
different result. Ikof, with his small series of crania from
Constantinople, is the only observer who got a result which accords in
any degree with what we know of the head form of the modern Semitic
peoples. On the other hand, Glück in Bosnia and Livi in Italy find no
other sign of long-headedness than a slight drop in index of a point
or two. Jacobs, in England, whose methods, as Topinard has observed,
are radically defective, gives no averages for his Sephardim, but they
appear to include about eleven per cent less pure long-headed types
than even their Ashkenazim brethren in London. This, it will be noted,
is the exact opposite of what might normally be expected. This tedious
summary forces us inevitably to the conclusion that, while a
long-headed type of Sephardim Jews may exist, the law is very far from
being satisfactorily established.
Thus, from a study of our primary characteristic--the proportions of
the head--we find our modern Jews endowed with a relatively much
broader head than that of the average Englishman, for example: while
the best living representative of the Semitic race, the Arab, has a
head which is even longer and narrower than our own type. It is, in
short, one of the longest known, being in every way distinctly
African. The only modern Jews who even approach this type would seem
to be those who actually reside to-day in Africa, as in the case of
our two portrait types from that region. Two possible explanations are
open to us: either the great body of the Jews in Europe
to-day--certainly all the Ashkenazim, who form upward of ninety per
cent of the nation, and quite probably the Sephardim also, except
possibly those in Africa--have departed widely from the parental type
in Palestine; or else the original Semitic type was broad-headed, and,
by inference, distinctly Asiatic in derivation; in which case it is
the modern Arab which has deviated from its original pattern. Ikof is
the only authority who boldly faces this dilemma, and chooses the
Asiatic hypothesis with his eyes open.[19] Which, we leave it to the
reader to decide, would be the more likely to vary--the wandering Jew,
ever driven from place to place by constant persecution, and
constantly exposed to the vicissitudes of life in densely populated
cities, the natural habitat of the people, as we have said; or the
equally nomadic Arab, who, however, seems to be invariable in type,
whether in Algeria, Morocco, the Canary Islands, or Arabia Felix
itself? There can be but one answer, it seems to us. The original
Semitic stock must have been in origin strongly dolichocephalic--that
is to say, African as the Arabs are to-day; from which it follows,
naturally, that about nine tenths of the living Jews are as widely
different in head form from the parent stock to-day as they well could
be. The boasted purity of descent of the Jews is, then, a myth. Renan
(1883) is right, after all, in his assertion that the ethnographic
significance of the word Jew, for the Russian and Danubian branch at
least, long ago ceased to exist. Or, as Lombroso observes, the modern
Jews are physically more Aryan than Semitic, after all. They have
unconsciously taken on to a large extent the physical traits of the
people among whom their lot has been thrown. In Algiers they have
remained long-headed like their neighbors, for, even if they
intermarried, no tendency to deviation in head form would be provoked.
If, on the other hand, they settled in Piedmont, Austria, or Russia,
with their moderately round-headed populations, they became in time
assimilated to the type of these neighbors as well.
Nothing is simpler than to substantiate the argument of a constant
intercourse and intermixture of Jews with the Christians about them
all through history, from the original exodus of the forty thousand
(?) from Jerusalem after the destruction of the second temple. At this
time the Jewish nation as a political entity ceased to exist. An
important consideration to be borne in mind in this connection, as
Neubauer suggests very aptly, is that opposition to mixed marriages
was primarily a prejudice of religion and not of race. It was
dissipated on the conversion of the Gentile to Judaism. In fact, in
the early days of Judaism marriage with a nonbeliever was not
invalid at all, as it afterward became, according to the Jewish
code. Thus Josephus, speaking of the Jews at Antioch, mentions that
they made many converts, receiving them into their community. An
extraordinary number of conversions to Judaism undoubtedly took place
during the second century after Christ. As to the extent of
intermarriage which ensued during the middle ages discussion is still
rife. Renan, Neubauer, and others interpret the various rigid
prohibitions against intermarriage of Jews with Christians--as, for
example, at the church councils of 538, 589, at Toledo, and of 743 at
Rome--to mean the prevalent danger of such practices becoming general;
while Jacobs, Andree, and others are inclined to place a lower
estimate upon their importance. Two wholesale conversions are known to
have taken place: the classical one of the Khozars, in South Russia,
during the reign of Charlemagne, and that of the Falashas, who were
neighboring Arab tribes in Yemen. Jacobs has ably shown, however, the
relatively slight importance of these. It is probable that the
greatest amount of infusion of Christian blood must have taken place,
in any event, not so much through such striking conversions, as
insidiously through clandestine or irregular marriages.
[Illustration: FERGHANAH, TURKESTAN.
HÉRAULT, FRANCE.
ELIZABETHGRAD, RUSSIA.
SPAGNUOLI, BOSNIA.
ELIZABETHGRAD, RUSSIA.
JEWISH TYPES.]
We find, for example, much prohibitive legislation against the
employment of Christian servants by Jews. This was directed against
the danger of conversion to Judaism, by the master, with consequent
intermarriage. It is not likely that these prohibitions were of much
avail, for, despite stringent laws in Hungary, for example, we find
the archbishop of that country reporting in 1229 that many Jews were
illegally living with Christian wives, and that conversions by
thousands were taking place. In any case, no protection for slaves was
ever afforded. The confinement of the Jews strictly to the Ghettos
during the later centuries would naturally discourage such
intermixture of blood, as also the increasing popular hatred between
Jew and Christian; but, on the other hand, the greater degree of
tolerance enjoyed by the Israelites even during this present century
would be competent speedily to produce great results. Jacobs has
strenuously, although perhaps somewhat inconclusively, argued in favor
of a substantial purity of the Jews by means of a number of other
data--such as, for example, by a study of the relative frequency of
Jewish names, by the supposed relative infecundity of mixed marriages,
and the like. Experience and the facts of everyday observation, on the
other hand, tend to confirm us in the belief that racially no purity
of descent is to be supposed for an instant. Consider the evidence of
names, for example. We may admit a considerable purity, perhaps, to
the Cohns and Cohens, legitimate descendants of the Cohanim, the sons
of Aaron, early priests of the temple. Their marital relations were
safeguarded against infusion of foreign blood in every possible way.
The name is, perhaps, in its various forms, the most frequent among
Jews to-day. But how shall we account for the equally pure Jewish
names in origin, such as Davis, Harris, Phillips, and Hart? How did
they ever stray so far from their original ethnic and religious
significance, unless the marital bars were lowered to a large degree?
Some of them certainly claim a foremost position numerically in our
Christian English directories. We have an interesting case of
indefinite Jewish delimitation in our portraits. The middle portrait
at page 341 is certainly a Jewish type. Dr. Bertholon writes me that
all who saw it immediately asserted it to be a Jew. Yet the man was a
professed Mussulman, in fact, even though his face was against him.
There is, as we have sought to prove, no single uniform type of head
peculiar to the Jewish people which may be regarded as in any sense
racially hereditary. Is this true also of the face? Our first
statement encounters no popular disapproval, for most of us never,
perhaps, happened to think of this head form as characteristic. But
the face, the features! Is this another case of science running
counter to popular belief?