Considering the changes brought about in European plants and animals in Australia, those occurring in the East Indian mongoose in Jamaica, the changes in European plants and animals in America, or American animals in Europe and European animals in Asia, Weismann’s position seems judicial.
The influences dependent on food, soil, and climate producing normal modifications have been remarkably illustrated in the gilled batrachian Axolotl. This, under the nourishment and change of surroundings of the Jardin des Plantes, was transformed into a gill-less batrachian, which had hitherto been regarded as belonging to a totally distinct family.
According to Darwin,[169] English dogs degenerate in India in a few generations, losing the peculiarities of form and mental character which distinguish their particular race, in spite of the greatest care in selection and prevention of crossing. An instance which well deserves the consideration of those anthropologists who attach but little importance to the influence of the environment and to the value of speech as an aid to the ethnologist is that of the Wurtemburgers, who settled (1816) near Tiflis in Russia. They had originally fair or red hair, light or blue eyes and coarse, broad features. In the first generation brown hair and black eyes began to appear; in the second black hair and eyes became the rule, while the face acquired an oval form. These changes were due entirely to the surroundings, no instance of crossing with Georgian natives being on record. At the same time, these transformed Wurtemburgers continue to speak their German mother-tongue uninfluenced by the local dialects.[170]
The alleged transformation of the British into the Yankee is commonly cited in illustration of the supposed effects of soil and climate. Three decades[171] ago Vogt remarked that American Anglo-Saxons or Yankees were instanced as illustration of change of character. Already, after the second generation, according to Pruner-Bey, the Yankee presents features of the Indian type. At a later period the glandular system is reduced to the minimum of its normal development. The skin becomes like leather; the colour of the cheeks is replaced by sallowness. The head becomes smaller and rounder, and is covered with stiff, dark hair; the neck becomes longer, and there is greater development of the cheek-bones and the masseters. The temporal fossæ becomes deeper, the jaw-bones more massive, the eyes lie in deep approximated sockets. The iris is dark, the glance is piercing and wild. The long bones, especially in the superior extremities, are lengthened so that the gloves manufactured in England and France for the American market are of a particular make, with very long fingers. The female pelvis approaches that of the male. According to Quatrefages, America has thus, from the English race, produced a new white race which might be called the Yankee race. Vogt believes that America dries up the skin and reduces the fat, an effect to which all the above differences might be reduced. That the head becomes smaller he utterly denies. Exact cranial measurements by Morton show that the skull of the Yankee is at least as large as that of the Englishman.
Similar changes have been noted in the Anglo-Saxon Australians. The true explanation of this is that early rigorous environment tended to cause reversion to types not uncommon even now in Great Britain, Ireland, and Scandinavia, resultant on the admixture of primitive types to which reference has been made. The same error has been made about the pelvis as about the skull. The male pelvis in the American is approximating the female in accordance with advance, since, as Havelock Ellis has shown,[172] not only by his skull, but by his pelvis, modern man is following a path first marked out by woman. The skull of the modern woman is more markedly feminine than that of the savage woman, while that of the modern man has approximated to it. Not only is the pelvis of the modern woman much more feminine in character than that of the primitive woman, but the modern man’s pelvis is also becoming more feminine.
The validity of Vogt’s position anent the “Yankee” change of type is fully demonstrated by the following portraits of four generations of a noted American family with a Scandinavian patronymic, coming originally from a district in England where the alleged “Yankee” type (even to its nasal tone and so-called “Americanisms”) occurs. The first “American” of the family (Fig. [3]) was born in Connecticut in 1761 and died in 1826. He had a dolichocephalic head with massive jaws, prominent lips, especially the upper. The nose is long and the eyes are set close together, the forehead very high and straight. Quite a change is noticeable in the second generation (Fig. [4]). The face is not so long, the lateral diameter of the head is larger, the forehead more prominent, and the eyes are a little farther apart. The nose is about the same length and while there is a resemblance about the mouth and chin, the distance from the front of the chin to the tip of the nose is not quite so long. The change seems to be due to shortening of the chin.
The next generation (Fig. [5]) shows still further changes. The forehead is broader and less retreating than either. There is perceptibly lest prognathism. There is less prominence in the supraorbital region.
The fourth generation exhibits (Fig. [6]) a nearly brachycephalic head. The head is nearly round, forehead full, eyes set in the head to correspond with its width, nose broad, upper lips short, and the lower jaw is evidently much shorter in a perpendicular line. These changes are due to a protruding forehead, receding chin, and delicate features.