would be necessarily small; and the children, according to Jewish law, followed the status of the mother.

The above estimate of Jewish proselytism is substantiated by all the evidence I can gather on the subject. Thus while of the 200 doctors of the Mishna up to 200 A.D., no less than eight' were of alien blood (though that Semitic), of the 1,500 doctors of the Gemara, from 200 to 600 A.D., I can only find one (Mari bar Rahel) who seems to have been descended from a proselyte. This seems to indicate the dying out of proselytism after Christianity, though the change of scene from Palestine to Babylon may have also something to do with it. Rava and Nachman, two Babylonian Rabbis of the fourth century, in discussing a certain law, dismiss the case of a proselyte as it is so seldom (Gittin, 85 a). So, too, on looking through some eight hundred inscriptions, I found two female proselytess in the classical ones (114 in number), but not a single one on tombstones of later date.1 The colossal erudition of Wolfius ("Biblioth. Hebr.," II and IV) could only gather together forty-four names of proselytes during the Middle Ages, and with my utmost diligence I have only been able to add sixteen to these, five of whom died as martyrs for their new faith. As regards Moslem countries I cannot speak with such confidence. Moses de Coucy is said by Basnage to have rebuked the Jews of Spain for marrying Moorish women. But such intermarriage would only affect Sephardim, who form only 6 per cent. of the Jews of to-day, and would be for the most part with Semitic blood. The boasted tolerance of Islam only lasted down to 1040, and afterwards there was but little difference in the treatment Jews received under the Crescent and the Cross.

5

And even if history showed a greater infusion of Aryan blood than the above estimate would allow, the effect of this on Jewish characteristics would tend to be minimised by certain anthropological principles which have been completely overlooked by M. Renan and followers. I have already referred to the comparative infertility of mixed marriages (the Talmud

1 Some of these were very distinguished, e.g.: Akiba, the Targumist Onkelos, R. Meir, Schemajah, and Abtalion; three others are mentioned by Derenbourg, p. 223 n. (Cf. Brüll," Misnalehrer von heidnischer Abkunft," in his "Jahrbuch," ii.) 2 I owe this name to the erudition of my friend Mr. S. Schechter.

3 Beruria, re-named Sara, Orelli, No. 2522, and Soteria, who is termed mater synagoge, Id. No. 2523, both at Rome. A third given by Bernays, ii, 80, was not a full proselyte ("metuenti").

At Venice (Berliner), Toledo (Zunz), Paris (Longperier), Amsterdam (Castro), and other places given by Wolf, Zunz, and others.

5 Four at Wissemburg, 1264 (Neubauer, "Rev. Etudes Juives," No. 7), and one at Augsburg the same year (Zunz, "Literaturgeschichte," p. 350).

6 One of Maimonides' responses is to a proselyte from Islam (Frankel, "Entwurf," p. 30).

says they only produce girls, Nidda 13 b, Jebam. 62 a), and I would now point out its consequences. Taking the most extreme case imaginable, let us suppose that as many as onetenth of all Jews and Jewesses married outside the pale. Estimating the pure Jewish population to increase uniformly half as much again each generation of thirty years, I suppose the mixed marriage to result in only one surviving child, so that the next generation only replaces its Jewish parents. Then gradually raising the fertility as the offspring marry with Jews, but never making it equal to pure Jewish marriages, I find that in six generations, or two hundred years, the original ten per cent. has sunk to little over two.

And even this small percentage would show but little traces of its alien origin, owing to another anthropological principle to which I now proceed to call attention, I believe for the first time. On examining some cases of mixed marriages, I was struck by the uniformity with which the children resembled the Jewish side, and I was led to make special inquiry into the matter, with the following results:-Of 84 such marriages examined by me, 9 were sterile; of 35 I could obtain no definite results; 22 showed Jewish prepotency; 13 Gentile, and 5 mixed. Now when it is remembered that if mixed marriages occurred in the Middle Ages the offspring must have married again within the Jewish pale, it is hardly likely that the Gentile blood would persist throughout the ages, even if it were prepotent, and if the above rather rough results have any validity the prepotency is rather on the Jewish side, and at any rate there seems very little tendency to real intermixture (only in five families out of forty-nine). Another fact pointing in the same direction is the interesting point that in families into which there has been an infusion of Jewish blood this tends to appear in a marked and intensely Jewish cast of features and expression. I know of four instances of this myself, and Mr. Galton tells me that a couple occur in the family records he has been collecting. Now as reversion is mostly towards the side of greater prepotency, this curious fact confirms our conclusion as to the superior prepotency of Jewish blood.

1

(2) But it will be asked, and has been asked, "How will you account for the wide divergences from the Jewish type of skull, nose, eyes, hair, &c., which are shown in the statistics on these points given above, and must indeed be a matter of common observation ?" M. Renan has decided this point literally

The chance of a child resembling any ancestor might perhaps be roughly expressed by the reciprocal of its figure on Mr. Galton's system, 'Record,' p. 3; "Nature," Sept. 6th, 1883. Thus the chance of my resembling my maternal great-grandfather is. Cf., too, Galton, "Her. Geu.," p. 327 n.

ex cathedra: seated in his chair at the Bibliothèque Nationale, he has observed the Jewish savants who have applied for his aid, and concluded that there are several types of Jews which are absolutely irreducible to one another ("Le Judaisme," &c., p. 25). But the question of types is a question of averages, and you cannot so easily decide upon the non-existence of a type by pointing to a few divergences from it. An organism is not a manufactured article turned out by machinery, but may modify itself and be modified by the environment, introducing a principle of variability which causes the type to develop. An organic type therefore exists not where there is no variation, but where the variations follow the law of error, and where the modulus of variation is tolerably constant. This is in the main the case with most of the anthropological measurements I have laid before the meeting, and it follows that the variations, though they may be due to intermixture, may also be merely normal divergences from the standard.

It seems hardest to accept this result with regard to red hair, which we have seen to be exceptionally prevalent among Jews. Yet, as a matter of fact, red hair seems to be only a natural complement to black, so that for anthropological purposes we might even term red "light black." The colour of the hair is determined by the presence and amount of two pigments: when the darker is absent from any physiological cause red hair is the consequence, just as when both are absent albinism appears (Topinard, Elements d'Anthropologie," 1885, p. 323). Now just as albinoes occur among all races, including negroes, so does red hair. Eusebius declared that Adam was rufous, not only from the etymology of the name, but because red-haired men occurred among all the races of mankind (Topinard, loc. cit.). That "erythrism" among Jews is not due to intermixture, but probably to defective nutrition, is shown in the first place by its occurring among Jews of Africa and the East. It has been observed in Algiers, Tunis, Bosnia, Constantinople, Smyrna, Syria, Persia, and Bokhara. Secondly, from my analysis of Dr. Beddoe's results, it will be observed that red hair occurs among Sephardim to a greater extent than among Ashkenazim, and it has never been contended that the Sephardim have mixed much with any race markedly rufous. And, thirdly, when it does occur among Ashkenazim of North Europe, it is found more among Jews than in

1 Dr. Beddoe has paid particular attention to this point; see his paper previously cited, pp. 12-19 of the reprint and table at end. Andree, "Zur Volks.," p. 35, repeats most of this, but is mistaken in saying that rufous Jews have been observed at Cochin. I have seen somewhere that the red-haired Jews of Palestine claim to be Benjamites.

2 A certain amount of erythrism was, however, introduced into Spain by the Goths (cf. Beddoe, loc. cit., p. 24).

the indigenous population, whereas if it were due to intermixture we should expect to find the amount of erythrism among Jews intermediate between that of the natives among whom they dwell and the supposed original black hair of the Semites. Indeed, but for the abundant presence of red hair among Scotchmen it might be more open to explain the origin of red hair among Europeans as due to an infusion of Jewish blood than to account for it among Jews by assuming intermixture with Aryans.

The argument from red hair being thus dismissed with costs, the existence of blue eyes among Jews in relatively large proportions need not be regarded as overwhelming proof of intermixture. As is well known, all eyes are blue at birth, i.e., we see through to the back of the baby's iris, and if no pigment cells are deposited in the iris the eyes remain blue to the end of life (Topinard, loc. cit.). Thus blue eyes, as well as red hair, are a kind of minor albinism, and may result from defective nutrition or other physiological causes like red hair. That this is probably the real cause of its occurrence among Jews is confirmed by the fact that we find blue eyes among Asiatic as well as European Jews (cf. Beddoe, loc. cit.).

It may be convenient that I should here add what little evidence I have been able to collect as to the appearance of Jews in the past. It is a question whether Esau (Edom) was regarded as having red hair (Gen. xxv, 25), because that colour was frequent among the Idumæans. Dr. Beddoe suggests that red hair among Jews may have been due to intermixture with Idumæans after they became proselytes; but the existence of red hair among them, their proselytism,' and their intermarrying with Jews are all more or less conjectural. In the regulations about leprosy (Lev. xiii) it seems to be implied that the_hair was black, or at any rate dark. The Shunamite says, "I am black [swarthy], for the sun has browned me (Cant. 1, 5), but on the other hand speaks of the "raven locks" of her beloved (ibid., v, 11). If we could trust to the etymologies of proper names the five persons bearing the names Harim and Harumaph in the Bible had flat noses. The first definite information I can find is contained in a saying of a Mishnic Rabbi, R. Ishmael (about 120 A.D.), who says (Neg. ii, 1), "The sons of Israel are like boxwood, neither black nor white, but between the two," i.e., of olive complexion. Both Mishna and Gemara seem to use "black" (shachar, vide Buxtorf, sub voce, col. 2372) as synonymous both with "hair" and with "youth." The Derenbourg ("Essai," p. 227) says that the proselytism of the Idumæans was more political than religious.

1

It is to be remarked, however, that the chief passage (Pirke Aboth iii, 12) on which this identification is based is not of certain interpretation. See Taylor, p. 63, Geiger (“ Nachg. Schr.," iv, p. 338), and Strack in locum.

Targum or Chaldaic paraphrase on 1 Sam. xvi, 12, makes David "red-haired" instead of "ruddy," and the mistranslation has passed into Luther's version. This shows at least that the Jews of the time when the Targum was written (about 600 A.D.) were not averse to regarding the typical Jewish king as rufous. The light hair given to the Christ in early Art,' the traditional red hair attributed to Judas Iscariot, as well as the golden locks of Mary Magdalene, require further investigation. Later on I find Jehuda Halevi (c. 1140 A.D.) speaking of the golden hair of his beloved, a Spanish Jew, Roven Salomo, 1349 A.D., with light brown hair, and Rembrandt's Rabbi in the National Gallery has a red beard. All these indications serve to show that red hair at least is no late importation into Jewish anthropology. Evidence about blue eyes is more difficult to obtain, as it is still a doubtful point among scholars whether either Bible or Talmud has any word to express blue.

Altogether, then, the two chief arguments hitherto urged to prove intermixture—which may be roughly summarised as proselytism and red hair-cannot be said to be decisive, while there are other more positive arguments tending to show the comparative purity of the Jewish race, and to these I now turn.

I. The first and perhaps chief of these is the existence of a class of Jews who are not permitted by Jewish law to marry even full proselytes. These are the priests, or Cohanim, the Beni Aaron or sons of Aaron. We have already seen that at the time of the Maccabees, Jews were addressed in the Psalms under three appellatives-Israelites, Aaronites, and Proselytes. The sons of Aaron could only intermarry with the daughters of Aaron or of Israel. The discussion about the comparative purity of Babylon and the surrounding districts which gave rise to the saying, Babylon is sound, Mesene dead, Media ill, and Elam on its last legs" (Kidd. 71 a), was probably concerned with the purity of Cohanite marriages, for which any perceptible amount of "paste" or intermixture was considered as objectionable. The

1 See "Dict. Christ. Antiq.," art. "Christ, Early Representations of," and authorities there quoted.

2 Geiger, "Divan," p. 123. The poet uses, I regret to observe, the same words as are used in the Bible to represent the discoloration of the hair on the leprous spot (Lev. xiii, 30).

3 Figured in Rev. d. Et. Juives," No. 12.

4 It is worth while remarking that the Cozars, according to Ibn Foslan, had black hair (cf. Lagneau, "Denombrement," p. 49, note).

5 Upon the difficult question of Issah, or " paste," there are two papers in Graetz, "Monatsft," one by Graetz himself, "Illegitime Mischehen in Judäa," 1879, pp. 481-508, and one by F. Rosenthal, "Ueber Issah," 1881, pp. 38-48, 713-723, 207-217. Cf., too, Graetz "Das Königreich Mesene," pp. 31-33. I fancy that the custom of consanguineous marriages may be connected with the desire to preserve purity of descent; cf. R. Meir's recommendation (Kidd. 71 a, "Monats," 1879, p. 507), and Tobit, who marries of his own kindred (i, 9).