HUMAN RACES 1 63 



in the course of the history of each race. These acquisitions, 

 correlated and harmonized with the rest, have become 

 "fixed" and hereditary. The older and more important they 

 are to the system, the greater may, in general, be said to be 

 their fixity. But none are absolutely permanent; so far as 

 perceivable all can change, and probably even be lost, 

 under new conditions favoring or demanding a change or a 

 loss. Races are therefore not permanent but changeable. 



Examples of changes in somatic racial characters are more 

 or less clearly perceivable in many cases. 



The Aryans who have immigrated into India since per- 

 haps 2000 B.C. now often present color so nearly black that 

 nothing hke it exists in any other late branch of the white 

 race. The Ethiopians of Semitic derivation stand next in this 

 respect. The unmixed Arabs in Arabia and Egypt show not 

 seldom a rich full reddish brown color of their whole body, 

 fully equaling that of the American Indian; while among 

 higher class Arabs the skin may be practically white. On the 

 other hand the Lapp, the Eskimo and the northwest coast 

 American Indian show more or less depigmentation of the 

 skin, particularly of the body. Without mixture some of these 

 skins approach those of the whites. And a similar phenom- 

 enon is manifest here and there among the upper classes of 

 Japan and China. 



The cephalic index, as shown by Matiegka, v. Luschan, 

 Parsons, Fleure, has in general been slowly rising dui'ing the 

 present millenium in the Slavs, Germans, the English and 

 others. The average stature is increasing in Holland, Den- 

 mark, Sweden, Japan, and especially in the United States 

 (See Hrdlicka, 1925). The bulk of the supraorbital ridges, 

 the prominence and size of the malars and angles of the 

 lower jaw, the size of the jaws and teeth as a whole, are 

 diminishing in the civilized races. The character of the hair, 

 the nose, orbits, physiognomy, the bulk of the body, the 

 relative proportions of the trunk and the lower limbs, all are 

 changeable, and change appreciably here or there within 

 historic times. 



Many physical features are slowly changing now in some 

 peoples as may perhaps best be witnessed among the 



