390 SCIENCE PROGRESS. 



diseases, but also Topinard's departmental statistics of 

 colour, and Collignon's of head-breadth, and Bertillon's 

 of mortality, one ought, it would seem, to acquire therefrom 

 some solid grounds for the connection of physical types with 

 disease, and for the estimation of their comparative liability, 

 and of the probable results in the direction of selective pro- 

 pagation. In reality this turns out to be extremely difficult. 

 "The prime difficulty" in such questions "is that these 

 two factors, material prosperity and ethnic intermixture, 

 in most cases follow the same laws of geographical dis- 

 tribution." 1 



Thus in France the conquering races, in most of which 

 blond types originally prevailed, occupied, as a rule, the 

 most fertile tracts, which were also generally the most level 

 and those contiguous to the great ways of communication. 

 It is in such tracts that civilisation usually progresses fastest, 

 that great cities arise with their vices and sanitary disad- 

 vantages, and that blood is most mixed by continual 

 migration and marriage. All these circumstances and 

 conditions have to be taken into account before we can 

 undertake to say anything as to the correlation of physical 

 type with disease or military aptitude. The most promising 

 plan seemed to me to be the throwing together of a number 

 of departments having all one common character, but other- 

 wise differing variously. The results thus gained are, 

 however, more curious than conclusive. French anthro- 

 pologists generally describe the tall, blond, long-headed 

 type as subject to dental caries and myopia, and some add 

 hernia to the list of its defects. Now the six departments, 

 Nord, Pas-de-Calais, Somme, Aisne, Oise, and Calvados, 

 which seem most distinctly to combine in their population 

 all three marks of this type, have indeed a very bad record 

 for dental caries, and, except Calvados, for general military 

 unfitness ; but three out of the six stand much better than 

 the average of France as regards myopia and hernia. More- 

 over, bad teeth in the departments of France, strangely 

 enough, usually co-exist with a low mortality, and I am 



1 Ripley, "Ethnic Influences in Vital Statistics," Q. P. American 

 Statistical Association. 



