EDITOR'S TABLE. 



555 



the necessity that the delicate and 

 judicial work of combining the truth 

 which is revealed to each and of 

 rejecting' that which is false, should 

 fall to those who lie beyond the 

 reach of national prejudice. Writers 

 in England Beddoe and Isaac Taylor 

 have so far been most successful 

 in this comprehensive work. It is 

 now essayed for a third time in the 

 series of papers upon the Racial Ge- 

 ography of Europe, which begins in 

 this number. The Monroe doctrine 

 forbids that we should intermeddle 

 in European politics. The effect of 

 this political neutrality should be to 

 keep our hands free and our minds 

 clear in science. In itself it furnishes 

 a justification for our foreign intru- 

 sion into the European field. 



During the civil war, while the 

 first great investigation upon liWng 

 men was being prosecuted upon 

 nearly a million recruits in our 

 armies, the United States held a 

 proud place of leadership in that 

 branch of the science of anthropol- 

 ogy which deals with our own race 

 in the life. This tremendous task 

 exhausted all our energies at the 

 outset; attention was directed to the 

 American aborigines, and the white 

 man was forgotten. This is one of 

 several reasons competent to explain 

 the popular ignorance and scientific 

 neglect among us of a very live 

 subject. To the average American 

 reader, the word anthropology, if it 

 conveys any meaning at all, con- 

 jures up visions of Indians, Hotten- 

 tots. Fijians, and other savages, or 

 perhaps of museums and curiosities, 

 of Peruvian and Egj-ptian mummies, 

 cave-dwellers, and the like so far 

 have primitive ethnology and arche- 

 ology dominated the science. 



Another reason why we in Amer- 

 ica have passed by this line of in- 

 quiry is because the conditions here 

 have not invited research. Our own 

 population is so recent, so artificial, 



such a hodge podge of all civilized 

 peoples, that science stands aghast 

 at the problem of finding order in 

 such chaos, lu Europe all is, or 

 was until recently, quite different; 

 so that even now, after the railroad 

 and the factory have disturbed the 

 racial peace of the continent, the 

 remnants of law and order still re- 

 main. 



A special feature of this series of pa- 

 pers will consist of the majjs and por- 

 traits with which the articles will be 

 amply provided. Every portrait will 

 be accompanied by precise data, ob- 

 tained from measurements on the liv- 

 ing subject. The leading experts all 

 over iplurope, among them Drs. Am- 

 mon in Baden, Beddoe in England, 

 Collignon in France, Livi in Italy, 

 Janko in Hungary, Kollmann in 

 Switzerland, Ranke in Bavaria, and 

 others, have kindly aided in this 

 work; so that a large collection of 

 racial i)ortraits of permanent value 

 will be presented. With these will 

 be combined all the anthropological 

 maps of value already published, as 

 well as many entirely new ones. 

 Each of these has been especially 

 prepared for this purpose, indicating 

 the exact distribution of each type 

 of man or physical race trait, showu 

 in portrait and described in text. 

 By this means it is hoped that the 

 interests of true science may be sub- 

 served; and that at the same time a 

 necessarily technical subject may be 

 rendered comprehensible and inter- 

 esting to the general reader. 



In the first paper of the series, 

 printed in this number, the relation 

 of language to race and nationali- 

 ty, with the changes it undergoes 

 through the distribution of popula- 

 tion and the influence of environ- 

 ment, are considered. The next pa- 

 per will deal with the shape of the 

 head as an ethnic characteristic ; the 

 third with the color of the hair and 

 eyes that is to say, with the distri- 



