Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 45.djvu/786

764 follow that the intermixture has a favorable effect upon the race.

The difference in favor of the half blood is a most persistent phenomenon, as may be seen by a glance at the following table:

The last two entries in this table embrace mainly the Indians of the Southwest and of the Pacific coast.

The facts which appear so clearly in the preceding table may be brought out in a different manner by grouping all the Indian tribes according to their statures in three classes: those measuring more than 169 centimetres, or tall tribes; those measuring from 165 to 169 centimetres, or tribes of medium stature; and those measuring less than 165 centimetres, or short tribes. The frequencies of various statures in each of these classes have been plotted in Fig. 2. The horizontal line represents the individual statures from the lowest to the highest. The vertical distance of the curves from any point of the horizontal line shows how many among each one hundred individuals have the stature represented by that particular point. Thus it will be seen that 14·4 per cent of the full-blood men of the tallest class have a stature of 172 centimetres, while only 12·3 per cent of the half blood of the same class have the most frequent stature belonging to them—namely, 178 centimetres. Among the Indian women of the full-blood tribes 16·8 per cent have a stature of 158 centimetres, while only 14·4 per cent of the half bloods have their most frequent stature—namely, 160 centimetres.

This tabulation brings out the peculiarity that the statures of the half bloods are throughout higher than those of the full bloods; and that, at the same time, the most frequent statures are more frequent among the pure race than in the mixed race. This is expressed by the fact that the curves illustrating the