Academy or Sciences] 

 No. 3] 



AGE 



The conditions shown above are not favorable from the anthropological point of view. 

 Old age is a potent modifier of the features and even dimensions, and thereby a very disturbing 

 factor. The studies on the old Americans at large were limited, barring a few justified excep- 

 tions, to subjects up to 60; should the Academy series be limited in the same manner there would 

 remain but 60 of the old American and 22 of the not old American members; numbers that 

 could not be expected to give thoroughly satisfactory results. Moreover, even in the series up 

 to 60 there is a considerable predominance of the older subjects, as may be seen from the fol- 

 lowing table of age distribution: 



Table 2. — Age distribution of examined members 



These frequencies are so unexpectedly interesting in themselves that they deserve to be 

 shown graphically. Their regularity is probably largely due to demographic causes; that is, 

 gradually increasing death rate with age; but there is more in the showing than just that. This 

 however is a side issue. What concerns us here is the evidence that the observations on the 

 academicians are essentially observations on elderly and old men. In a large majority of them 

 development in most of the parts of the body has been completed, while in a good many of them, 

 notwithstanding their above-average preservation shown later, there have set in already more or 

 less involutionary (senile) changes. This unfavorable nature of the material can in no way be 

 overcome, it will affect all the results, and these facts, as already mentioned, must be constantly 

 remembered in the perusal of the data, more especially in the comparisons with less weighted 

 outside series. 



The consciousness of these defects would not however justify a too pessimistic attitude 

 toward the study. Many of the determinations will have a value, and the records should be 

 found highly useful in comparison with data on similar groups in other parts of the world, and 

 when like observations are repeated on the American academicians in the future. 



DESCRIPTIVE FEATURES 



A general inspection of the members of the Academy revealed an unexpectedly wholesome 

 status. Such a status could probably not be equaled in any random group of individuals of 

 similar ages taken at large. Extremes in any respect were absent. The mass of the members 

 could only be characterized as physically normal to above the general average. There were 

 found but a very few noteworthy anomalies and none of these was of a degenerative nature. It 

 may be stated, therefore, that barring rare exceptions, those who have become members of the 

 Academy within the last 30 years were in general characterized, aside from their mentalities, 

 also by physical normality to superiority. The old maxim of mens sana in corpore sano is cer- 

 tainly sustained by this group. Even the few subnormals were in no instance such in the essen- 

 tials or to any marked degree. 



The detailed scrutiny residted in a number of outstanding determinations. There was no 

 truly red-haired person, or highly blond, or markedly curly-haired in those examined. The 

 measurements of the old American 8 section of the membership, and those of members of Euro- 

 pean birth, while differing in some details, more particularly in the descriptive features, in the 



6 Members both of whose parents as well as all four grandparents, at least, were born in the United States. 



