Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 50.djvu/610

590 readily counterbalanced by taking so many observations that the fluctuations above and below the mean neutralize one another. Variation due to chance alone is no more liable to occur in the head than in any other part of the body. Rigid scientific methods are the only safeguard for providing against errors due to it. It is this necessity of making the basis of observation so broad that all error due to chance may be eliminated, which constitutes the main argument for the study of heads in the life rather than of skulls; for the limit to the number of measurements is determined by the perseverance and ingenuity of the observer alone, and not by the size of the museum collection or of the burial place. It should be added that our portraits have been especially chosen with a view to the elimination of chance. They will always, so far as possible, represent types and not individuals, in the desire to have them stand as illustrations and not merely pictures. This is a principle which is lamentably neglected in many books on anthropology; to lose sight of it is to prostitute science in the interest of popularity.

The most conspicuous feature of our map of cephalic index for western Europe is that here within a limited area all the extremes of head form known to the human race are crowded together. In other words, the so-called white race of Europe is not physically a uniformly intermediate type in the proportions of the head between the brachycephalic Asiatics and the long-headed negroes of Africa. A few years ago it was believed that this was true. More recently, detailed research has revealed hitherto unsuspected limits of variation. In the high Alps of northwestern Italy are communes with an average index of 89, an extreme of round-headedness not equaled anywhere else in the world save in the Balkan Peninsula and in Asia Minor. A typical Italian from this district, chosen for me by Dr. Livi, of Rome, from among three regiments of recruits, is shown on page 581. In profile the back of the head is even less developed than that of the Kalmuck girl in our illustration. This type of head prevails all through the Alps, quite irrespective of political frontiers. These superficial boundaries are indicated in white lines upon the map to show their independence of racial limits. There is no essential difference in head form between the Bavarians and