298 SCIENCE PROGRESS. 



South Europe and Asia Minor have been peopled thence 

 along several district routes which mainly follow the course 

 of the pliocene land-bridges. 



94. The " Mediterranean Race," thus described, has the 

 following- characteristics common to all its branches : The 

 outer complexion is typically brown ; brown skin ; brown 

 eyes, brown hair, abundant, and always more or less wavy. 

 It is thus equally distinct from the blonde white races which 

 bound it on the north, and from the negro races of Africa. 

 Modifications of the brown tint are found in all branches of 

 the race ; but are conceived to be due to intermixture either 

 with yet earlier aborigines or with subsequent intruders. 

 The body is well proportioned, the face oval, the nose 

 rather narrow, the orbits wide and set horizontally, the fore- 

 head high and nearly vertical, the cheekbones neither wide 

 nor very high ; the face not flattened, but if anything a little 

 prominent in front ; the neck long and well rounded, and 

 the features mobile and expressive. It is in fact the familiar 

 brunette type which every one recognises who has travelled 

 in any part of the Mediterranean. 



95. The forms of the skull are more variable, and have 

 been somewhat differently interpreted by a number of inves- 

 tigators. To Dr. E. Sergi, however, is due a suggestion 

 which at the same time explains the prevalence of a number 

 of concurrent types of structure over so wide an area, and 

 relieves us from the necessity of attributing so great impor- 

 tance to their divergences as has sometimes been the case. 

 He rejects, except as a convenient memoria teclmica, the 

 traditional and orthodox method of cranial measurement (to 

 which he refers rather scornfully as the " anthropology of the 

 indices ") on the ground that the length and breadth mea- 

 surements usually taken express merely resultants of groups 

 of growth tendencies on the part of the various bones which 

 compose the skull, and that such resultants may — as is obvi- 

 ous — be composed in a variety of ways. And certainly to 

 classify mankind merely by the ratio of the length to the 

 breadth of their heads, or by any other such arbitrary ratio, 

 is little better than it would be to classify animals in general 

 by the ratio of the length to the breadth of their whole body ; 



