406 SCIENCE PROGRESS. 



and even of the neolithic period, brachykephaly is extremely- 

 uncommon. Nevertheless it does occur ; but still more 

 seldom does it appear in an extreme form. Most of us are 

 of opinion that the ancestors of the modern " Alpine " 

 brachykephals were neighbours of the Iranian Galchas, and 

 pushed westwards into Europe during the neolithic period, 

 possibly bringing with them some twigs of the Mongoloid 

 stem, and incorporating any western brachykephals whom 

 they met with. Also we think that the paucity of remains 

 of this race in the later prehistoric or earlier historical 

 periods may have been due to their position as serfs to the 

 higher race, which excluded them from elaborate modes of 

 sepulture. But Lapouge takes another view, which I 

 believe to be original. He thinks we have no grounds for 

 believing in such a westerly migration : he would derive 

 the modern from the prehistoric western shortheads, and 

 explain their rarity in tombs simply by their relative paucity 

 in the populations. That paucity, he thinks, may have 

 grown into multitude by the action of such processes of 

 selection and elimination as he and Ammon have found and 

 demonstrated as operating at the present day. In a word, 

 he rejects, like Lyell, hypotheses of catastrophe. 



What these processes are may perhaps be best seen in 

 the work of Ammon. The material of this was gotten by 

 observation of the conscripts and scholars of the Grand 

 Duchy of Baden, especially those of the cities of Karlsruhe, 

 Mannheim and Freiburg-in-Brisgau ; and when gotten it 

 was subjected to analysis of the most masterly, minute and 

 multifarious character. For some of his purposes and con- 

 clusions this material was ample ; for others perhaps scarcely 

 so. It may be necessary here to point out that for the 

 determination of a question of head-breadth a much smaller 

 number of cases, or of individuals, is sufficient, than for 

 that of a question of colour or complexion. In the former 

 case, as a rule, most of the knowledge sought can be 

 acquired by simply dividing the material into the two 

 classes of long and short heads. In the latter little can 

 be learned, generally speaking, without dividing the ma- 

 terial into a large number of classes. Thus Virchow, in his 



