170 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



who have still three, almost four, inches more to grow. In Bosnia, 

 for example, where the natives range at about the American level — - 

 that is to say, among the very tallest in the world (1.72 metre) — 

 the Jews are nearly three inches and a half shorter on the average.* 

 If we turn to northern Italy, where Lombroso has recently in- 

 vestigated the matter, we apparently find the Jew somewhat bet- 

 ter favored by comparison. He is in Turin less than an inch in- 

 ferior to his Italian neighbors. But why? Xot because taller than 

 in the case of Bosnia, for his stature in both places is the same. The 

 difference decreases, not because the Jew in Piedmont is taller, 

 but solely because the north Italians are only of moderate height. 

 So it goes all over Austria and Bussia: the diminutiveness is plainly 

 apparent, f There is "in all Europe only a single exception to the 

 rule we have cited. Anutchin finds them in Odessa and Riga 

 slightly to exceed the Christians. In order to emphasize this point 

 it will repay us to consider the adopted fatherland of the Jews a 

 bit more in detail. 



Our map herewith shows a general average of stature for Poland 

 by districts. This unhappy country appears to be populated by 

 the shortest human beings north of the Alps; it is almost the most 

 stunted in all Europe. The great majority of the districts, as our 

 map shows, are characterized by a population whose adult men 

 scarcely average five feet four inches (1.62 metre) in height. This 

 is more than half a head shorter than the type of the British Isles 

 or northern Germany. "What is the meaning of this? Is it entirely 

 the fault of the native Poles? We know that the northern Slavs are 

 all merely mediocre in stature. But this depression is too serious 

 to be accounted for in this way; and further analysis shows that 

 the defect is largely due to the presence of the vast horde of Jews, 

 whose physical peculiarity drags down the average for the entire 

 population. % This has been proved directly. Perhaps the deepest pit 

 in this great " misery spot," as we have termed such areas of dwarfed 

 population elsewhere, is in the capital city of Warsaw, where Elkind 

 found the average stature of two hundred male Jews to be less 

 than five feet three inches and a half (1.61 metre).* The women 

 were only four feet eleven inches tall on the average. Compare the 

 little series of maps given on pages 172 and 173 if further proof of this 

 national peculiarity be needed. Two of these, it will be observed, give 



* Gluek, 1896; and Weisbach, 1877 and 1895 a. 



f Majer and Kopernicki, 1877, p. 36, for Ruthenia; Stieda, 1883, p. 70; Anutchin, 

 • 1889, p. 114, etc. 



% Zakrezewski, 1891, p. 38. In the October Monthly our stature map of all Russia brings 

 out the contrast very strongly. 



* Centralblatt fur Anthropologic, iii, p. 66. Uke, cited by Andree, 1881, p. 32, agrees. 



