Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 31.djvu/332

318 them. The portrait of Borulawsky is after a contemporary engraving, that of Winckelmeier from a recent photograph. Beside them are placed a new-born infant of twenty inches, an infantry soldier of minimum stature (five feet one inch), a man of average size (five feet five inches), and a cuirassier of six feet. The illustration comprises all the important variations in human stature.

The conditions that affect the stature of populations and races of men may all be described under one general head that of nutrition. The size of a population, a race, or a group of individuals living for several generations in the same conditions of environment and resources, is proportionate to its nutrition. Coming to particulars, we find that this nutrition depends, first, on the aptitude for assimilation, which is a question of climate; and, second, upon the facility with which the people can obtain a quantity of food in proportion to their power of assimilation.

It was long believed that climate alone had a great influence on stature; and, in fact, if we regard the white or light-colored races, we remark that the stature is less in climates of extreme temperatures than in temperate latitudes. In the extremely cold Arctic regions, the Lapps, Esquimaux, and Greenlanders are very small; but coming down into more temperate regions and more fertile countries, we find much larger races, like the Norsemen, Russians, Anglo-Saxons, and North-Germans in Europe, and the Canadians and Indians in America. Farther south, and as the temperature becomes hotter, the stature diminishes; a fact which may be verified among the Italians and Spaniards, and which is observed in most of the great regions of the globe.

These variations are not the effect of climate, but are directly dependent, as we have already said, on nutrition. In very cold climates, assimilation is excessive, for the organism needs a large quantity of food to sustain it against the outer temperature. If, in consequence of the rigor of the climate and the limited resources of the country in game and fish, waste is a little superior, or quite equal, to assimilation, the population subject to such conditions must continue small. This is the case with the Laplanders and the Esquimaux of the Arctic islands and the east coast of Greenland. But when game and fish are abundant, the stature of the tribe rises; as takes place with the Esquimaux, whose average height increases as their habitat draws nearer to their southern limit. There the Esquimaux cease to be dwarfs and reach the average height of five and a half feet, or greater than that of the French population. The climate is still rigorous in Canada, and organic assimilation very active, but the country is fertile and food abundant. There the native Indians and the colonists of European origin attain great size and vigor. The Norsemen and the Russians in Europe are in analogous conditions. On what a Russian mujik eats in a day a Spanish peasant could subsist for a week. It is to the influence of a keen winter cold and the assimilative power