Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 51.djvu/218

208 the other, being equally a linguistic term, should go as well. The only alternative seems to be to apply the term Homo Alpinus to this broad-headed group wherever it occurs, whether in mountains or plains, in the west or in the east. The name is justified by the circumstance that its main body occurs in the Alps, and that its purest types culminate there as well.

We now come to the last of our three races, which is generally known as the Mediterranean or Iberian type. It prevails everywhere south of the Pyrenees, along the southern coast of France, and in southern Italy, including Sicily and Sardinia. Once more we return to a type of head form almost identical with the Teutonic. Our portraits of Corsicans on a preceding page, with the enlargement of one of the four in the group, show the exaggerated length of face and the narrowness of the forehead. The cephalic index drops from eighty-seven and above in the Alps to about seventy-five all along the line. This is the primary fact to be noted. Coincidently, the color of hair and eyes becomes very dark, almost black. The figure is less amply proportioned, the people become light and rather agile. It is certain that the stature at the same time falls to an exceedingly low level: fully nine inches—more than a head—below the averages for Teutonic Europe. Authorities are, however, divided as to the significance of this. It has been shown that while the average height is low, a considerable number, and those of the purest type in other respects, are of goodly stature. It may indeed be that, as we have already suggested, too protracted civilization is responsible for this diminutiveness. The people of northern Africa (illustrated by our portrait), pure Mediterranean Europeans, are of medium size in fact. Personally I incline to the view that culture is to blame, and that the type is normally of