428 SCIENCE PROGRESS. 



people of Aries. Pellagra again, though still widely diffused 

 in the region of the Po, is difficult to identify in the statis- 

 tics as a cause of degeneration ; it is seldom mentioned as 

 a cause of disqualification. 



Livi is an accomplished handler of statistics, and is quite 

 aware of their weak points, such as the propensity of obser- 

 vers to choose a round number rather than the one imme- 

 diately below or above it, and even to treat numbers with a 

 5 in the unit place as round numbers. It is on grounds 

 such as these that he ventures to challenge the applicability 

 of the law of the bicipital curve, discovered by the elder 

 Bertillon, to many of the cases which are cited as examples 

 of it. For, says he, when you amalgamate the curves re- 

 presenting the stature of two races differing by not more 

 than 6 or 7 centimetres (provided that these curves are 

 tolerably uniform and free from the effects of the tendency 

 to round numbers and otherwise incorrect observation) there 

 will result not a double vertex but simply a broadening and 

 a depression of the upper part of the figure. This he exem- 

 plifies by amalgamating the curves of Udine, in the Frioul, 

 and Oristano, in Sardinia, the average stature of these dis- 

 tricts being 1657 and 1585 millimetres respectively. The 

 resultant curve is broad and flat, with but a slight appear- 

 ance of duplicity. But when Livi goes on to imply that 

 the double peak in the curve of the Doubs, which suggested 

 the idea of two races to Bertillon, is probably due to the 

 grouping of the measurements by inches instead of centi- 

 metres, to the idolatry of round numbers or to similar 

 causes, I think he goes a little too far. Lagneau : has 

 shown that the phenomenon in question is equally well or 

 even better marked in the Oise, the Seine-Inferieure and 

 several other departments of the north and north-east of 

 France, precisely where the history of Gallic and Germanic 

 conquest would lead us to expect it, while in the more 

 purely Keltic portions of France it does not appear. 



1 Anthropologic de la France, p. 41. Paris, 1879. 



John Beddoe. 



