Popular Science Monthly/Volume 51/May 1897/The Racial Geography of Europe: Stature IV

1389377Popular Science Monthly Volume 51 May 1897 — The Racial Geography of Europe: Stature IV1897William Zebina Ripley

THE RACIAL GEOGRAPHY OF EUROPE.

A SOCIOLOGICAL STUDY.

(Lowell Institute Lectures, 1896.)

By WILLIAM Z. RIPLEY, Ph. D.,

ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF SOCIOLOGY, MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY; LECTURER IN ANTHROPO-GEOGRAPHY AT COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY.

IV.—STATURE.

THE average stature of man, considered by racial groups or social classes, appears to lie between the limits of four feet four inches and five feet ten inches, giving, that is to say, a range of about one foot and a half. The physical elasticity of the species is not, however, as considerable as this makes it appear. The great majority of the human race is found restricted within much narrower limits. As a matter of fact, there are only three or four groups of really dwarfed men, less than five feet tall. Our map of the world shows a considerable area inhabited by the diminutive Bushmen in South Africa, and another large body of dwarfs occurs in New Guinea. The line of demarcation in the first case between the yellowish African Bushmen and the true negroes is very sharp; but in the East Indies the very tall and light Polynesians shade off almost imperceptibly in stature through Melanesia into the stunted Papuans. Other scattering representatives of true dwarf races occur sporadically throughout the Congo region and in Malaysia, but their total number is very small. On the whole, considerably more than ninety-nine per cent of the human species is above the average height of five feet and one inch; so that we may still further narrow our range of variation between that limit and five feet ten inches. We thereby reduce our racial differences of stature to about nine inches between extremes. These variations in size, it will be observed, are less than those which occur among the lower animals within the same species. Compare, for example, the dachshund, the St. Bernard, the Italian greyhound, and the smallest lapdog, and remember that they are all ascribed to the same species; or that the

land pony and the Percheron horse are likewise classified together. These abnormities are, to be sure, partly the result of artificial selection by man; but the same variation holds to a considerable extent among the wild animals.

The bodily height of a group of men is the resultant of a number of factors, many of which are as purely artificial as those concerned in the domestication of animals. These causes are quite as truly social or economic as they are physical or physiological. Among them we may count environment, natural or artificial selection, and habits of life. Beneath all of these, more fundamental than any, lies the influence of race which concerns us ultimately. This is overlaid and partially obscured by a fourth peculiarity manifested as a result of the sportiveness of Nature, whereby a large number of variations are due to chance, seemingly not caused by any distinct influences whatever. By scientific analysis we may eliminate this last factor, namely, chance variation. The first four causes besides race are more important and deserve consideration by themselves.

Among savages it is easy to localize the influence of environment, as it acts directly through limitation of the food supply. In general, the extreme statures of the human species are found either in regions where a naturally short race, like the Bushmen of South Africa, are confined within a district of great infertility like the Kalahari Desert; or, on the other hand, where a naturally tall race, like the Polynesians in the Pacific Ocean, enjoys all the material bounties which Nature has to bestow. It is probable that the prevalent shortness of the Eskimo and other inhabitants of the arctic regions is largely due to this factor. It is also likely that the miserable people of Terra del Fuego are much shorter than the Patagonians for the same reason. Scarcity or uncertainty of food limits growth. Wherever the life conditions in this respect become changed, in that place the influence of environment soon makes itself felt in the average stature of the inhabitants. Thus the Hottentots, physically of the same race as the Bushmen, but inhabiting a more fertile region, and, moreover, possessed of a regular food supply in their flocks and herds, are appreciably taller from these causes alone. All the aborigines of America seem to be subject to this same influence of the fertility of their environment. In the Mississippi Valley, for example, they are much taller than in the desert lands of Arizona and New Mexico. In the mountains on either side of the Mississippi basin, they are as a rule distinctly shorter, although living the same life and belonging to the same race. The Creeks and the Iroquois exceed the Pueblos by several inches, probably because of the material bounty of their environment; and where we find a single tribe, such as the Cherokees, inhabiting both the mountains and the plains, we find a deficiency of stature in the mountains quite marked by comparison.[1]

Among civilized peoples this direct influence of environment acts likewise through the food supply to affect the stature of any given group of men. Thus, in Europe as a rule, it may be said that, as among the aborigines of America, the populations of mountainous districts are shorter than those which enjoy the fertility of the plains and the river basins,[2] Wherever the geology of a district has produced a soil which yields with difficulty to

cultivation, or where the climate is unfavorable to prosperity, the influence is reflected in the physical stature of the population. All over Europe we may locate such "misery spots," one of which will, however, serve as an example. It is depicted in the accompanying map.

This spot is likewise indicated in the south central part of France upon our general map for Europe, on page 30, by a small black-dotted area. This means a general average stature of five feet and two to three inches a low level not elsewhere touched In France save in a little spot to the southwest of this, where similar conditions prevail. Here in Limousin there is a barren range of low hills which lies along the dividing line between the departments of Dordogne, Corréze and Haute-Vienne, about halfway between Périgueux and Limoges. The water courses on our map show the location of these uplands. They extend over an area about seventy-five miles long and half as wide, wherein average human misery is most profound. Dense ignorance prevails. There is more illiteracy than in any other part of France. The contrast in stature, even with the low average of all the surrounding region, is clearly marked by the dark tint. There are sporadic bits of equal diminutiveness elsewhere to the south and west, but none are so extended or so extreme. Two thirds of the men are below five feet three inches in height in some of the communes, and the women are three or more inches shorter even than this. One man in ten is below four feet eleven inches in stature. This is not due to race, for several racial types are equally stunted in this way within the same area. It is primarily due to generations of subjection to a harsh climate, to a soil which is worthless for agriculture, to a steady diet of boiled chestnuts and stagnant water, and to unsanitary dwellings in the deep, narrow, and damp valleys. Still further proof may be found to show that these people are not stunted by any hereditary influence, for it has been shown that children born here, but who migrate and grow up elsewhere, are normal in height; while those born elsewhere, but who are subject to this environment during the growing period of youth, are proportionately dwarfed.[3]

We have referred in the preceding paragraph to another similar "misery spot" to the southwest of the Limousin hills. It is dotted black upon the map of Europe. The cause is here the same. The department of Landes derives its name from the great expanse of flat country, barely above the sea level, which stretches away south of Bordeaux. There is no natural drainage slope. The subsoil is an impervious clay. In the rainy season, water accumulates and forms stagnant marshes, covered with rank vegetation. At other times the water dries away, and the vegetation dies and rots. Malaria was long the curse of the land. Government works are to-day reclaiming much of it for cultivation and health, but it will be generations before the people recover from the physical degeneration of the past. Influences akin to these have undoubtedly been of great effect in many other parts of Europe, especially in. the south of Italy, in Sardinia and Spain, where the largest area of short statures in Europe prevails to-day.

Environment thus acts directly upon stature through the food supply and economic prosperity. The second modifying influence lies in so-called artificial selection—a cause which is peculiarly potent in modern social life. The efficiency of this force depends upon the intimate relation which exists between bodily height and physical vigor. Other things being equal, a goodly stature in a youth implies a surplus of energy over and above the amount requisite merely to sustain life.[4] Hence it follows that, more often than otherwise, a tall population implies a relatively healthy one. Our double map, covering the westernmost promontory of French Brittany, shows this most clearly. In the interior cantons, shorter on the average by an inch than in towns along the seacoast, there is a corresponding increase of defective or degenerate constitutional types. The parallelism between the two maps is broken in but three or four instances. The map, in fact, illustrates the truth of our assertion far better than words can express it.

This relation between stature and health is brought to concrete expression in the armies of Europe through a rejection of all recruits for service who fall below a certain minimum standard of height, generally about five feet. The result of this is to preclude the possibility of marriage for all the fully developed men, during their three years in barracks; while the undersized individuals, exempted from service on this account, are left free to propagate the species meanwhile. Is it not apparent that the effect of this artificial selection is to put a distinct premium upon inferiority of stature, in so far as future generations are concerned? This enforced postponement of marriage for the normal man, not required of the degenerate, is even more important than at first sight appears. It implies not merely that the children of normal families are born later in life—that would not be of great moment in itself—it means far more than this. The majority of children are more often born in the earlier half of married life, before the age of thirty-five. Hence a postponement of matrimony means not only later children but fewer children. Herein lies the great significance of the phenomenon for us. Standing armies tend in this respect to overload succeeding generations with inferior types of men. This selection is, in operation, akin to the influence which Galton has invoked as a partial explanation for the mental darkness of the middle ages. This he ascribes to the beliefs and customs by which all the finer minds and spirits were withdrawn from the field of matrimony by the Church, leaving the entire future population to the loins of the physically robust and adventurous portion of the community. Mind spent itself in a single generation of search for knowledge; physique, bereft of intellect, was left to its own devices among the common people.

The intensity of this military selection, potent enough in time of peace, is of course highly augmented during the prosecution of a war. At such periods the normal men are not only isolated for an indefinite period; their ranks are permanently decimated by the mortality at the front. The selective influence is doubly operative. Fortunately, we possess data which appear to afford illustration of its effects. Detailed investigation in various parts of France is bringing to light certain curious after-effects of the late Franco-Prussian War. We do not always fully realize what such an event means for a nation, quite irrespective of the actual mortality, and of the direct economic expenditure. Every family in the land is affected by it; and the future bears its full share with the contemporaneous population. In France, for example, during the year of the war, there were seventy-five thousand fewer marriages than usual. In 1871, upon its conclusion, an unprecedented epidemic of them broke out, not equaled in absolute numbers since the veterans returned from the front in 1813, on the cessation of hostilities at that time.

Two tendencies have been noted, from the comparison of the generations of offspring severally conceived before, during, and after the war. This appeared in the conscripts who came before the recruiting commissions in 1890-’92, at which time the children conceived in war times became, at the age of twenty, liable for service. In the population during the progress of the war the flower of French manhood, then in the field, was without proportionate representation. There must have been an undue preponderance, not only of stunted men, rejected from the army for deficiency of stature alone, but of those otherwise physically unfitted for service. Hence, the population born of this time ought, if heredity means anything, to retain some traces of its relatively degenerate derivation. This is indeed the case. In Dordogne this contingent included nearly seven per cent more deficient statures than the normal average. Quite independently, in the distant department of Herault, Lapouge discovered the same thing. He found in some cantons a decrease of nearly an inch in the average stature of this unfortunate generation, while exemptions for deficiency of stature suddenly rose from six to sixteen per cent.[5] This selection is not, however, entirely maleficent. A fortunate compensation is afforded in another direction. For the generation conceived of the men returned to their families at the close of the war has shown a distinctly upward tendency almost as well marked. Those who survived the perils and privations of service were presumably in many cases the most active and rugged; the weaker portion having succumbed in the meanwhile, either to wounds or sickness. The result was that the generation conceived directly after the war was as much above the average, especially evinced in general physique perhaps more than in stature, as their predecessors, born of war times, were below the normal.

Another illustration of the operation of artificial selection in determining the stature of any given group of men appears in the physique of immigrants to the United States. In the good old days when people emigrated from Europe because they had seriously cast up an account and discovered that they could better their condition in life by coming to America—that is, before the days when they came because they were over-persuaded by steamship agents, eager for the commissions on the sale of tickets, or because of the desire of their home governments to be rid of them—in those days investigation revealed that on the average the immigrants were physically taller than the people from whom they sprang. This difference, in some instances, amounted to upward of an inch upon the average. Among the Scotch, a difference of nearly two inches was shown to exist by the measurements taken during our civil war. These immigrants were a picked lot of men—picked, because it required all the courage which physical vigor could give to pull up stakes and start life anew. This law that natural emigrants, if I may use the term, are taller than the stay-at-home average was again exemplified during the civil war in another way. It was found that recruits hailing from States other than those in which they were born were generally taller than those who had always remained in the places of their birth—that is to say, here again physical vigor and the adventurous migratory spirit seemed to stand in close relation to one another.[6]

In times of peace, perhaps the most potent influence of this form of artificial selection bears upon the differences in stature which obtain between different occupations or professions. The physically well developed men seek certain trades or occupations in which their vigor and strength may stand them in good stead: on the other hand, those who are by nature weakly, and coincidently often deficient in stature, are compelled to make shift with some pursuit for which they are fitted. Thus, workers in iron, porters, firemen, policemen are taller, as a class, than the average, because they are of necessity recruited from the more robust portion of the population. In marked contrast to them tailors, shoemakers, and weavers, in an occupation which entails slight demands upon the physical powers, and which is open to all, however weakly they may be, are appreciably shorter than the average. Moreover, certain diseases fall upon this second class in a way which tends still further to lower the average stature among them. Thus, consumption is uncommonly prevalent in these particularly sedentary industrial classes, and it is also more common among tall youths. It seems, therefore, that this disease weeds out, as if by choice, those who within this relatively stunted class rise above its average. As an extreme example of this selective influence exercised in the choice of an occupation we may instance grooms, who as a class are over an inch shorter than the British population as a whole. This is probably because men who are light in build and short in stature find here an opening which is suited to their physique. Their weight may nevertheless be often greater than the stature implies, because of an increase which has taken place late in life.

The final effects of this influence of artificial selection are highly intensified by reason of the fact that, as soon as the choice of occupation is once made, other forces come into play which differentiate still further the stature of the several classes. This is the last of our modifying influences upon racial stature, namely, the effect of habits of life or of the nature of the employment. Thus, the weakly youth who enters a sedentary occupation immediately becomes subjected to unfavorable circumstances as a result of his choice. If he chooses to take up the tailor's trade because he is physicaly unfitted for other pursuits, all the influences of the trade tend to degenerate his physique still further. Among these we may count the cramped position in which he works, the long hours, the unsanitary surroundings, etc. An active life conduces to growth and vigor, especially an active life in the open air. Denied all these advantages, everything operates to exaggerate the peculiarities which were due to natural causes in the preceding generation alone. This direct influence of the nature of the employment is probably the second principal cause of the great differences in stature which we observe among the several social classes in any community. At the head stand the liberal professions, followed in order, as our table shows, by the farmers and the commercial group, then by the industrial

Average Stature in Inches (Great Britain).

No. of
Observa-
tions.
Age (males). Professional
class.
Commercial
class.
Industrial class
Country City
3,498 15 years. 63.6 62.2 61.8 61.3
592 23 " 68.7 67.4 67.4 66.4
1,886 30-40 " 69.6 67.8 67.6 66.8

Averages by Occupation

No. of
observations
Occupation Stature (inches) Weight (pounds)
174 Miscellaneous outdoor 67.6 142.0
242 Clerks 67.3 126.7
834 Labourers 67.1 140.0
209 Iron-workers 67.1 140.0
135 Tailors and shoemakers 66.9 134.5
235 Miscellaneous indoor 66.7 132.5
101 Grooms 66.5 138.7

open-air classes, and finally by those who are engaged in indoor and sedentary occupations. The difference between these last two—namely, those who work in the open air and those who are confined within doors—amounts in Great Britain to upward of one half an inch upon the average, if we consider masons, carpenters, and day laborers as typical of the first class, and tailors and shoemakers of the second. As our table shows, the differences during the period of growth often amount to upward of two inches, greater among girls than among boys. As an extreme example of divergencies of this kind, we may instance a difference of seven inches between boys of fourteen in the well-to-do classes and those who are in the industrial schools in Great Britain. Later in life this disparity becomes less, as it appears that the influence of factory life is more often to retard growth than to cause a complete cessation of it.

Interesting deductions might also be drawn from the relation of the height to the weight in any class, by which we may determine to some degree when and how these degenerative influences become effective. Thus clerks, as a class, are above the average stature, but below it in weight. This follows because these men are recruited from a social group where the influences during the period of growth are favorable. The normal stature was attained at this time. The unfavorable circumstances have come into play later through the sedentary nature of the occupation, and the result is a deficiency in weight. The case of grooms given above is exactly the reverse of this, for they became grooms because they were short, but have gained in weight afterward because the occupation was favorable to health.

These differences in stature within the community offer a cogent argument for the protection of our people by means of well-ordered factory laws. The Anthropological Committee of the British Association for the Advancement of Science delares, as a result of its detailed investigation, that the protection of youth by law in Great Britain has resulted in the gain of a whole year's growth for the factory children. In other words, a boy of nine years in 1873 was found to equal in weight and in stature one of ten years of age in 1833. This is nature's reward for the passage of laws presumably better than the present so-called "beneficent" statute in South Carolina which forbids upward of eleven hours' toil a day for children under the age of fourteen. In every country where the subject has been investigated—in Germany, in Russia, in Austria, Switzerland, or Great Britain—the same influence is shown. Fortunately, the advance out of barbarism is evidenced generally by a progressive increase in the stature of the population as an accompaniment of the amelioration of the lot of the masses, which is certainly going on decade by decade, absolutely if not relatively. There is no such change taking place among the prosperous and well-to-do. It is the masses which are, so to speak, catching up with the procession. It offers a conclusive argument in favor of the theory that the world moves forward.

One of the factors akin to that of occupation which appears to determine stature is the unfavorable influence of city life. The general rule in Europe seems to be that the urban type is physically degenerate. This would imply, of course, not the type which migrates to the city on the attainment of majority, or the type which enjoys an all-summer vacation in the country, but the urban type which is born in the city, and which grows up in such environment, to enter a trade which is also born of town life. The differences in stature which, are traceable to this influence of city life are considerable. The town population of Glasgow and Edinburgh offers an extreme example wherein the average stature has been found to be four inches less than the average for the suburban districts. The people, at the same time, are on the average thirty-six pounds lighter. Dr. Beddoe, the great authority upon this subject, concludes his investigation of the population of Great Britain by this statement: "It may therefore be taken as proved that the stature of men in the large towns of Britain is lowered considerably below the standard of the nation, and as probable that such degradation is hereditary and progressive."

On the other hand, it must be confessed that this unfavorable influence of city life is often obscured by the great social selection which is at work, as we shall hope to show later, in the determination of the physical type of the population of great cities. While the course of the town type by itself is downward, often-times the city attracts another class which is markedly superior, in the same way that the immigrants of the United States have been distinguished in this respect. Taking London as a whole, the stature of its people is apparently above the level of the surrounding districts, despite the unfavorable influences of urban life. At the same time the suburban counties about London are marked by a standard below the average. This follows, probably, from the great selective process by which all of the better types of the rural population are continually being drawn off into the vortex of city life. The effect of it is, of course, to increase the average stature of the town population, taken as a whole.

It would be interesting to inquire in how far the relative height of the sexes is due to a similar selective process. Certain it is that among us, in civilization, women average from three to four inches below men in stature, a disparity which is considerably less among primitive peoples. Dr. Brinton has invoked as a partial explanation, at least, for this, the influence of the law of sexual division of labor which obtains among us. This law commands, in theory, that the men should perform the arduous physical labor of life, leaving the more sedentary portion of it to the women. If the conscious choice of mates had followed this tendency, its effect would certainly be unfavorable to the development of an increasing stature among women, while it might operate to better the endowment of men in that respect. It is impossible, in the time at our command, to follow this out. Probably this difference of stature between the sexes is partially due to some other cause which stops growth in the woman earlier than in the man. The problem is too complex to follow out in this place.

From the preceding array of facts it will appear that in stature we have rather an irresponsible witness in the matter of race. A physical trait so liable to disturbance by circumstances outside the human body is correspondingly invalidated as an indication of hereditary tendencies which lie within. We are compelled for this reason to assign the third place to this characteristic in our series of racial tests, placing it below the color of the hair and eyes in the scale. This does not mean that it is entirely worthless for our ethnic purposes. There are many clear cases of differences of stature which can be ascribed to no other cause; but it bids us be cautious about judging hastily. It commands us to be content with nothing less than hundreds of observations, and to rigidly eliminate all social factors. The best way to do this is to take the broad view, by including so many individuals that locally progressive and degenerative factors may counterbalance one another. Turning back to our world map of statures, it will at once appear that we can not divide the human species into definite continental groups characterized by distinct peculiarities of stature. The so-called yellow Mongolian race comprises both tall and short peoples. The aborigines of America are, as a rule, tall; but in the Andes, the basin of the Columbia River, and elsewhere they are quite undersized. The only two racial groups which seem to be homogeneous in stature are the true African negroes and the peoples of Indonesia and the Pacific. In Africa the environment is quite uniform. In the other cases racial peculiarities seem to be deeply enough ingrained to overcome the disturbances due to outward factors. The Malays are always and everywhere rather short. The Polynesians are obstinately inclined toward tallness. With these exceptions, racial or hereditary predispositions in stature seem to be absent. Let us turn to the consideration of Europe by itself, and inquire if the same rule holds here as well.

The light tints upon this map[7] indicate the tall populations; as the tint darkens, the people become progressively more and more stunted. Here again we find that Europe comprehends a very broad range of variations. The Scotch, with an average height of five feet and ten inches, stand on a level with the tall Polynesians and Americans, both aboriginal and modern white. At the other extreme, the south Italians, French, and Spaniards, range alongside the shortest of men, if we except the abnormal dwarf races of Africa. From one to the other of these limits there is a regular transition, which again points indubitably to racial law. Two specific centers of tall stature appear, if we include the minor but marked tendency of the Dalmatians and Montenegrins along

the Adriatic Sea. The principal one lies in the north, culminating in the British Isles and Scandinavia. In Britain, economic prosperity undoubtedly is of importance, as the level of material comfort is probably higher than on the Continent. With this exception it appears that the Teutons as a race are responsible for the phenomenon. Wherever they have penetrated, as in northern France, down the Rhone Valley, or in Austria, the population shows its effects.

Central Europe is generally marked by medium height. The people tend to be stocky rather than tall. The same holds true as we turn to the Slavic countries in the east of Europe. Across Austria and Russia there is a progressive although slight tendency in this direction. The explanation of the extreme short stature of southern Europe is more problematical. Our map points to a racial center of real diminutiveness, at an average of five feet and one or two inches. Too protracted civilization, such as it was, is partly to blame. Some authorities, notably Lapouge

and Fallot, even assert that naturally the people are as tall as the Alpine populations. Northern Africa certainly favors this view. We must await further investigation on this point, resting content with the fact, whatever the cause may be, that the average stature is exceedingly low to-day.

We may demonstrate the innate tendency of the Teutonic peoples toward tallness of stature more locally than by this continental method. We may follow the trait from place to place, as this migratory race has moved across the map. Wherever these "greasy seven-foot giants," as Sidonius Apollinaris called them, have gone, they have implanted their stature upon the people, where it has remained long persistent thereafter. Perhaps the clearest detailed illustration of the expression of this racial peculiarity is offered by the people of Brittany. Many years ago observers began to note the contrasts in the Armorican Peninsula between the Bretons and the other French peasantry; and especially the local differences between the people of the interior and those fringing the seacoast. The regularity of the phenomenon is made manifest by the preceding map. This is constructed from observations on all the youth who came of age during a period of ten years from 1850-'59. There can be no doubt of the facts in the case. It has been tested in every way. Other measurements, made twenty years later, are precisely parallel in their results, as we have already seen in Finisterre.[8]

The average stature of the whole peninsula is low, being only about five feet and five inches; yet in this "tache noire" it descends more than a full inch below this. This appreciable difference is not wholly due to environment, although the facts cited for Finisterre show that it is of some effect. The whole peninsula is rocky and barren. The only advantage that the people on the coast enjoy is the support of the fisheries. This is no insignificant factor, to be sure. Yet we have direct proof beyond this that race is here in evidence; this is afforded by other physical differences between the population of the coast and that of the interior. The people of the littoral are lighter in hair and eyes, and appreciably longer-headed; in other words, they show traces of Teutonic intermixture. In ancient times this whole coast was known as the "litus Saxonicum," so fiercely was it ravaged by these northern barbarians. Then, again, in the fifth century, immigrants from Britain, who in fact bestowed the name of Brittany upon the country, came over in hordes, dispossessed in England by the same Teutonic invaders. They were probably Teutonic also; for the invaders of Britain came so fast that they literally crowded themselves out of the little island. The result has been to infuse a new racial element into all the border populations in Brittany, while the original physical traits remain in undisturbed possession of the interior. The Normans to the northeast are, on the other hand, quite purely Teutonic, especially marked in their height. In this case environment and race have joined hands in the final result, but the latter seems to have been the senior partner in the affair.

One more detailed illustration of the persistence of stature as a racial trait may be found in the people of the Austrian Tyrol, familiarized to us in the last paper. Unfortunately, our present map is constructed by different districts, so that we can not compare valley with valley, as it would be most profitable to do. We have to be content with more general results. For purposes of orientation we have reproduced upon this sketch the rivers shown upon our map in the preceding paper, so that certain comparisons may be drawn. We have already seen that the lower Inn Valley (uppermost in our map) was a main channel of Teutonic immigration into a primitively broad-headed Alpine country by race. On the south up the Adige Valley by Trient came the second intrusive element in the long-headed brunette Mediterranean

peoples. This map at once enables us to endow each of these with its proper quota of stature; for the environment is quite uniform, considered as in this map by large districts covering valley and mountain alike. Each area contains all kinds of territory; so that we are working by topographical averages, so to speak. Moreover, the whole population is agricultural, saving a few domestic industries in the western half. Such differences as arise must be therefore in large measure due to race. The regular transition from the populations at the northeast, with generally a majority of the men taller than five feet seven inches, to the Italian slopes, where less than one fifth attain this moderate height, is sufficient proof.[9] The progressive decline goes on still further as we go south, as our map of Europe has indicated, away down to the toe of Italy's boot. Could demonstration in mathematics he more certain that here in the Tyrol we have a case of an increase of stature due to race alone? One of the most persistent traits of the Teuton is his bodily height. We in America, among the tallest people in the world, owe much of our advantage in this respect to our Teutonic lineage. The rest is due to the high level of prosperity enjoyed by the people in the United States as a whole.

  1. Dr. Boas, in Veihandlungen der Berliner anthropologischen Gesellschaft, Sitzung von Mai 18, 1895, gives fine details on the American aborigines.
  2. Ranke, in his Beiträge zur physischen Anthropologie der Bayern, finds the mountaineers taller in bis country; but Dr. Livi proves the opposite for Italy. Vide also Der Meuscb, ii, p. 126.
  3. Collignon in Mémoires de la Société d'Anthropologie, series iii, vol. i, fase. 3, pp. 32 seq.
  4. The two maps by Chassagne on Brittany are given in Revue d'Anthropologie, series ii, vol. iv, p. 440.
  5. For further details, vide the excellent analysis by Dr. Collignon, in Mémoires de la Société d'Anthropologie, Paris, series iii, vol. i, p. 36 seq., and Dr. Lapouge, in Les Selections Sociales, pp. 208 and 234 seq. A most noteworthy treatise in many ways. Vide also Bulletin de la Société Languedocienne de Geographie, xvii, p. 335 seq.
  6. For most of the examples of social and economic differences in stature, I am indebted to Dr. Beddoe for his superb work On the Stature and Bulk of Man in Great Britain; to the Anthropometric Committee of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, report of 1883; to Roberts's Manual of Anthropometry; and to our American results given in Gould's Investigations in the Military and Anthropological Statistics of American Soldiers, 1869; and Baxter, in Medical Statistics of the Provost-Marshal-General's Bureau, 1875.
  7. This map is constructed from a great number of detailed local investigations, the results of which have been, as far as possible, correlated and reduced to a common base. Many serious difficulties have to be overcome, and the final result must be regarded as merely approximate. For example, some observers have studied the entire population of districts; others draw their figures from the army alone, from which, of course, all the abnormally short men have been eliminated. Some give averages alone; others work by percentile grades. To be sure, these two methods give parallel results; but how discover the average from them? Complete details will be published in due season.
  8. Dr. Chassagne has maps almost identical with this, for the period 1874-'78. Vide Revue d'Anthropologic, second series, vol. iv, p. 439 seq. Our map is adapted from Broca's original results in Mémoires de la Société d'Anthropologie, Paris, series one, vol. iii, p. 186 seq.
  9. Details are given in Mittheiluugen der anthropologischen Gesellschaft in Wien, vol. xxi, 1891, p. 69 seq