Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 51.djvu/647

Rh among anthropologists. It is of great significance for the student of sociology. His explanation for the Basque type is that it is a subspecies of the Mediterranean stock evolved by long-continued and complete isolation, and in-and-in breeding primarily engendered by peculiarity of language. The effects of heredity, aided perhaps by artificial selection, have generated local peculiarities and have developed them to an extreme. The objection to this derivation of the Basque from the Mediterranean stock which at once arises is that the latter is essentially dolichocephalic, while the Basques, as we have shown, are relatively broad-headed. It appears, however, that the Basque is broad-headed only at one spot, and that far forward near the temples. The cranium itself at its middle point is of only medium width and the length is only normal. The proportions, in fact, excluding the frontal region, are very much like those of the Mediterranean stock in Spain across the Pyrenees. They approach much nearer to them, in fact, than to the Alpine or broad-headed stock. It is thus only by its abnormal width at the temples that the cranium of the Basques may be classed as broad-headed. Dr. Collignon regards the type, therefore, a more or less a variation of the Mediterranean variety, accentuated in the isolation which this tribe has always enjoyed. It approaches in stature and in general proportions much nearer also to the Mediterranean than to the Alpine stock in France.

That the Basque facial type—that which is recognized as the essential characteristic of the people, both in France and Spain—is a result of artificial selection, is rendered probable by another bit of evidence. The Basques, especially in France where the type is least disturbed by ethnic intermixture as we have seen, are distinguishable from their Béarnais neighbors by reason of their relatively greater bodily height. This appears upon our map of stature on page 632. The lighter tints denoting taller statures are quite closely confined within the linguistic boundary. This is not due to any favorable influence of environment; for the Basque foothills are rather below the average in fertility. The case is not analogous to that of the tall populations of Gironde, farther to the north, light tinted upon the map. They, as we took occasion to point out in the preceding paper, are above the average either in Dordogne on the north or in Landes on the south. The contrasted tints show this clearly. These differences are in great measure due to the surpassing fertility of the valley of the Garonne, as compared with the sterile country upon either flank. No such material explanation is applicable to the Basque stature. Some other cause must be adduced. Ought not artificial selection, if indeed it once became operative in a given ethnic group, to work in this direction? Goodly stature is