Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 19.djvu/313

Rh broad typical characters of the foreign race. It is just this broad type that the anthropologist desires to sketch and describe, and he selects as his examples such portraits of men and women as show it best. It is even possible to measure the type of a people. To give an idea of the working of this problem, let us suppose ourselves to be examining Scotchmen, and the first point to be settled how tall they are. Obviously there are some few as short as Lapps, and some as tall as Patagonians; these very short and tall men belong to the race, and yet are not its ordinary members. If, however, the whole population were measured and made to stand in order of height, there would be a crowd of men about five feet eight inches, but much fewer of either five feet four inches or six feet, and so on till the numbers decreased on either side to one or two giants, and one or two dwarfs. This is seen in Quetelet's diagram. Fig. 8, where the heights or ordinates of the binomial curve show the numbers of men of each stature, decreasing both ways from the central five feet eight inches, which is the stature of the mean or typical man. Here, in a total of near 2,600 men, there are 160 of five feet eight inches, but only about 150 of five feet seven inches or five feet nine inches, and so on, till not even ten men are found so short as five feet, or so tall as six feet four inches.

It thus appears that a race is a body of people comprising a regular set of variations, which center round one representative type. In the same way a race or nation is estimated as to other characters.

The people whom it is easiest to represent by single portraits are