Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 52.djvu/620

600 perfectly regular, as our maps in the October (1897) number of this series have made manifest. It has been established that while the cities in the north are less broad-headed than the country, in mid-Italy no appreciable difference between the two exists; and in the south, the cities being ever nearer the mean for the country as a whole, actually contain fewer long-headed individuals than the rural districts. This consideration, which no statistician can fail to keep in mind, seems, however, to be insufficient to account for the entire phenomenon, especially north of the Alps. We are forced to the conclusion, in other words, that there is some mental characteristic of the long-headed race or types, either their energy, ambition, or hardiness, which makes them peculiarly prone to migrate from the country to the city; or else, what would compass the same result, a peculiar disinclination on the part of the broad-headed Alpine race of central Europe thus to betake itself to the towns. The result in either case would be to leave the fate of the urban populations to be determined more and more by the long-headed type.

A second mode of proof of the peculiar tendency of the long-headed type to gravitate toward the city is based upon the detailed study of individuals, tracing each person from his place of birth, or from generation to generation from the rural origin to the final urban residence. Dr. Ammon divided his conscripts into three classes: The urban, those whose fathers were of city birth, as well as themselves; the semi-urban, comprising those born in cities, but whose fathers were immigrants from the country; and, thirdly, the semi-rural class, who, born in the country, had themselves taken up an abode in the city. Comparing these three classes with those who were still domiciled in the country, a regularly increasing long-headedness was apparent in each generation. Lapouge and his disciples in France are now collecting much valuable information upon this point which can not fail to be suggestive when accumulated in sufficient amount. Everything goes to prove a slight but quite general tendency toward this peculiar physical characteristic in the town populations, or in the migratory class, which has either the courage, the energy, or the physical ability to seek its fortunes at a distance from its rural birthplace.

Is this phenomenon, the segregation of a long-headed physical type in city populations, merely the manifestation of a restless tendency on the part of the Teutonic race to reassert itself in the new phases of nineteenth-century competition? All through history this type has been characteristic of the dominant classes, especially in military and political, perhaps rather than purely intellectual, affairs. All the leading dynasties of Europe have long been