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POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



human equator of the earth. Such is as it should be ; for while 

 the greatest extremes of environment are offered between the 

 steaming plains of the Ganges and the frigid deserts and steppes 

 of the north, at the same time direct intercourse between the two 

 regions has been rendered well-nigh impossible by the height of 

 the mountain chain itself. In each region a peculiar type has de- 

 veloped without interference from the other. At either end of 

 the Himalayas proper, where the geographical barriers become 

 less formidable, and especially wherever we touch the sea, the 

 extreme sharpness of the human contrasts fails. The Chinese 

 manifest a tendency toward an intermediate type of head form. 



Negbo Type, Central Africa. Cephalic Index, V0. 



Japan shows it even more clearly. From China south the Asi- 

 atic broad-headedness becomes gradually attenuated among the 

 Malays, until it either runs abruptly up against the Melanesian 

 dolichocephalic group or else vanishes among the islanders of the 

 Pacific. Evidence that in thus extending to the southeast the 

 Malays have dispossessed or absorbed a more primitive popula- 

 tion is afforded by the remnants of the negritos. These black 

 people still exist in some purity in the inaccessible uplands of the 

 large islands in Malaysia. 



Compared with the extreme forms presented in the Old World, 

 the Americas appear to be quite homogeneous and at the same 

 time intermediate in type, especially if we except the Eskimo; 

 for in the western hemisphere among the true Indians the ex- 

 treme variations of head form are comprised between the cephalic 

 indices of 85 in British Columbia and Peru, and of 76 on the 

 southeast coast of Brazil. Probably nine tenths of the native 



