Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 52.djvu/162

148 the width at the malar bones is the crucial test. Measured by the cephalic index—that is, the extreme breadth of the cranium expressed in percentage of its length from front to back—the uniformity in type is so perfect that it can not be represented by shaded maps as we have heretofore been accustomed to do. Wherever heads have been measured, whether in the Arran Islands off the west coast of Ireland, the Hebrides and Scottish Highlands, Wales and Cornwall, or the counties about London, the results all agree within a few units. These figures, noted upon the localities where they were taken, are shown upon our little sketch map on this page. It will be observed at once that the indexes all lie between 77 and 79, with the possible exception of parts of Scotland, where they fall to 76.

What do these dry statistics mean? In the first place, they indicate a living population in which the round-headed Alpine race of central Europe is totally lacking; an ethnic element which, as we have already shown in our preceding articles, constitutes a full half of the present population of every state of middle western Europe—that is to say, of France, Belgium, Italy, and Germany. We have already proved that this Alpine race is distinctively a denizen of mountainous regions; we christened it Alpine for that reason. It clings to the upland areas of isolation with a persistency which even the upheavals of the nineteenth century can not shake. Almost everywhere it appears to have yielded the seacoasts to its aggressive rivals, the Teutonic long-headed race in the north and the dolichocephalic Mediterranean one on the south. This curious absence of the broad-headed