Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 51.djvu/207

Rh considerable at a given stature. There is, however, for each country or group of men some point about which the physical trait clusters. Thus the largest percentage of a given stature among the Scotch occurs at about five feet nine and a half inches. Yet a very large number of them, about five per cent, fall within the group of five feet seven inches (1·70 metres) that is to say, no taller



than an equal percentage of the Ligurians—and even in Sardinia there is an appreciable number of that stature. We must understand therefore, when we say that the Scotch are a tall people or a long-headed or blond one, that we mean thereby not that all the people are peculiar in this respect even to a slight degree, but merely that in this region there are more specimens of these special types than elsewhere. Still it remains that the great mass of the people are merely neutral. This is a more serious obstacle to overcome than direct contradictions. They merely whet the appetite. Our most difficult problem is to separate the typical wheat from the noncommittal straw; to isolate our racial types from the general mean of the continent.

We have now seen how limited are the racial results attainable by the first of our two means of identification—that is, the purely anthropological one. It has appeared that only in the most simple conditions are the several traits constant and faithful to one another in their association in the same persons. Nor are we justified in asking for more. Our three racial types are not radically distinct seeds which, once planted in the several parts of Europe, have there taken root; and, each preserving its peculiarities intact, have spread from those centers outward until they