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102 an important part in making certain types of man predominant in one region or another. Ammon has shown that the city population of southwestern Germany is more short-headed than the country population, and concludes that this is due to natural selection. All the phenomena of this character that have been described can be explained satisfactorily by the assumption that the city population is more mixed than the country population. This point has been brought out most clearly by Livi's investigations in Italy, where he has proved that in regions where long-headed forms prevail in the country, in the city the population is more short-headed; while in regions in the country in which short-headed forms prevail, in the city the population is more long-headed.

It seems to me that, under present conditions, it is best in the study of the anatomical characteristics of man not to start from far-reaching assumptions in regard to the question of the effect of heredity and environment, but first of all to ascertain the distribution of types of man. This is a definite problem that requires treatment and investigation just as much as the study of languages or the study of the customs of various tribes. At the present time we are far from being familiar with the distribution of types on the various continents. No matter what the ultimate explanation of the distribution of types may be, we cannot evade the task of investigating their present distribution and of seeking for the explanation of the reasons for such distribution.

Before entering into this subject more fully, it may be well to take up the second criticism of the method of physical anthropology, which has been made with increasing frequency of late years. A number of investigators object to the metric method of anthropology, and desire to bring about a substitution of description for measurements. This proposition is based on a misunderstanding of the function of measurements. The necessity of making measurements developed when it was found that the local varieties of mankind were very much alike—so much so that