Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 51.djvu/643

Rh foothills, although at Roncevaux extending back into the mountains proper. Behind them, in the recesses of the Pyrenees, is the third layer of population. These mountaineers are distinctly dolichocephalic. Conscripts with the characteristically narrow head, the long and smoothly oval face, are depicted in portraits on this same page. These last people are really Mediterranean in type, overflows from the true Iberian stock, which forms the bulk of the Spanish population. This ethnic segregation has probably been preserved because of the political independence of the people of the mountains during many generations. These three groups merge into one imperceptibly to the eye; but on analysis their differentiation from one another has now been clearly established. How has it come to pass that our Basques are thus left interposed between two neighboring populations so entirely distinct



in respect of these important racial traits? Is it permissible to suppose that the intermediate zone in which the triangular face occurs most commonly is really peopled by a simple cross between the two ethnic types on either side? This would be similar to Canon Taylor's supposition that a brachycephalic parent stock determined the head form of the Basques, while the narrow lower face and chin was a heritage from a dolichocephalic long-visaged ancestry. Such disharmonic crania arise sometimes from crossing of the two types of head form, especially in Switzerland, where the Teutonic and Alpine races come into contact with one another. An objection to this theory of secondary origin by intermixture is close at hand. It is fatal to the assumption. It is an important fact that the Basques are relatively