590 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



readily counterbalanced by taking so many observations that the 

 fluctuations above and below the mean neutralize one another. 

 Variation due to chance alone is no more liable to occur in the 

 head than in any other part of the body. Rigid scientific meth- 

 ods are the only safeguard for providing against errors due to it. 

 It is this necessity of making the basis of observation so broad 

 that all error due to chance may be eliminated, which constitutes 

 the main argument for the study of heads in the life rather than 

 of skulls; for the limit to the number of measurements is deter- 

 mined by the perseverance and ingenuity of the observer alone, 

 and not by the size of the museum collection or of the burial 

 place. It should be added that our portraits have been especially 

 chosen with a view to the elimination of chance. They will 

 always, so far as possible, represent types and not individuals, in 

 the desire to have them stand as illustrations and not merely 

 pictures. This is a principle which is lamentably neglected in 

 many books on anthropology ; to lose sight of it is to prostitute 

 science in the interest of popularity. 



The most conspicuous feature of our map of cephalic index for 

 western Europe * is that here within a limited area all the ex- 

 tremes of head form known to the human race are crowded to- 

 gether. In other words, the so-called white race of Europe is not 

 physically a uniformly intermediate type in the proportions of 

 the head between the brachycephaiic Asiatics and the long-head- 

 ed negroes of Africa. A few years ago it was believed that this 

 was true. More recently, detailed research has revealed hitherto 

 unsuspected limits of variation. In the high Alps of northwest- 

 ern Italy are communes with an average index of 89, an extreme of 

 round-headedness not equaled anywhere else in the world save in 

 the Balkan Peninsula and in Asia Minor. A typical Italian from 

 this district, chosen for me by Dr. Livi, of Rome, from among 

 three regiments of recruits, is shown on page 581. In profile the 

 back of the head is even less developed than that of the Kal- 

 muck girl in our illustration. This type of head prevails all 

 through the Alps, quite irrespective of political frontiers. These 

 superficial boundaries are indicated in white lines upon the 

 map to show their independence of racial limits. There is no 

 essential difference in head form between the Bavarians and 



* Complete technical details liy the author as to the mode of construction, with full 

 references for each portion of the continent, will be found in L' Anthropologic, Paris, vol. vii, 

 pp. 513 8eq. Since the above map was drawn, certain minor changes have been made, in 

 conformity with suggestions received from Eui-opean experts. They all appear in the map 

 in L' Anthropologic to which reference is here made ; most of them were so unimportant 

 for present purposes that this map was left unchanged. The only serious modification 

 would be to make Silesia much darker, as I believe it to be less Teutonized than this map 

 indicates. 



