ANTHROPOLOGICAL WORK IN EUROPE. 



59 



the bases of the upper middle incisors as horizontal, while the 

 Germans make it pass from the middle point of the upper curve 

 of the auditory meatus to the middle part of the lower curve of the 

 optic orbit. Virchow claims that the German line is preferable, 

 as it can easily be taken on the living person, as well as upon the 

 skull. He adds, usually with a little quiet satisfaction : ' The 

 French horizontal line throws the head up, while ours throws it 

 more naturally and downward ; they are more proud, we are mod- 

 est." For years Dr. Virchow has edited the Zeitschrift fiir Eth- 

 nologie, the official journal of the Berlin Anthropological Society, 

 of which he has always been a leading member. Dr. Virchow's 

 seventieth birthday was celebrated with much of German hearti- 

 ness last fall, but years tell little on him, and he does a prodigious 

 amount of work with all the enthusiasm of a young man. 



Of the many other workers in physical anthropology in Ger- 

 many we can mention but 

 one Dr. Johannes Ranke, 

 of the University of Munich. 

 He is perhaps the only full 

 and regular Professor of 

 Physical Anthropology in 

 Germany. Since 1866 Prof. 

 Ranke has been editor of 

 the Archiv fiir Anthropo- 

 logic, and since 1877 of the 

 Urgeschichte Bayerns. His 

 work, Der Mensch, in two 

 large volumes, is the best 

 elementary work on descrip- 

 tive anthropology. His lab- 

 oratory is well equipped in 

 part with instruments of his 

 own devising. One of the 

 most important operations 

 in anthropology is finding 

 the internal capacity of the 

 cranium. There are a host 



of methods. The difficulty is that no two methods give the same 

 result, and no single method in the hands of two unskilled ob- 

 servers gives exact agreement. The thing desired, then, is to 

 work out a method of " cubage " that shall give invariable results. 

 Dr. Ranke has attempted this. His students are given a bronze 

 skull of known capacity. This is filled with millet seed rammed 

 in tightly with a wooden plug. The filling is afterward turned 

 out and measured. Every step in the operation is subject to 

 fixed rules. When a student gains such skill that he succeeds 



Prof. Friedrich Ratzel. 



