ANTHROPOLOGY IN WESTERN HEMISPHERE AND PACIFIC ISLANDS. 55 



These researches must be carried on in a strictly scientific manner, with 

 accurate and abundant observation, then classification and comparison, and 

 eventually hypothesis and demonstrable conclusion. 



The Western Hemisphere and the islands of the Pacific offer unparalleled 

 opportunities for useful and practical anthropological research among modern 

 peoples. Here are inhabited areas typical of practically all environments. 

 Here great numbers of persons, from all the large races of man and many of 

 the smaller natural divisions, make their home. The contagion of New 

 World ideas and ideals is such that racial barriers are often lightly held in 

 mind. It is probable that the solidity of all ethnic groups is beginning to 

 crumble in the heat of this great melting-pot. 



Three of the most important modern anthropological problems of the 

 Western Hemisphere and the Pacific islands will be briefly presented under 

 the following titles: ethnic heredity, influence of environment on mankind, 

 and human amalgamation. 



ETHNIC HEREDITY. 



Man, like .every other form of life, is a product of the factors of heredity 

 and environment. Heredity in mankind ceaselessly acts to perpetuate the 

 parental characteristics in the offspring, and so successfully that persons 

 recognize at sight a member of any of the great races of mankind, because 

 each member bears such a number of typical characteristics. 



Though a number of able investigators are rapidly working out a long 

 list of universally hereditary human characteristics, only anthropologists have 

 investigated the inheritance of ethnic characteristics, and even they have 

 scarcely begun. 



An ethnic group may be "pure blood" in many characteristics, and so 

 breed true, as other animals may. Such a group of people as, for instance, 

 the Negrito of the Philippines has so long intermarried and so long remained 

 in the same stable environment that only slight visible variations occur. 



If, to avoid controversy, it is granted that all ethnic groups on the whole 

 have naturally equal capacity, still no one will claim that ethnic groups do 

 not differ in their characteristics. What are the salient characteristics of 

 important modern ethnic groups? 



In the Western Hemisphere study should be made of the normal white 

 man, of the American Indian and Eskimo, and of the Negroes where, because 

 of cultural reversion in Central and South America, they are found in su]> 

 stantially all the conditions they occupy in Africa, and in much superior ones 

 also. There should be studies of the Japanese and Chinese in America, 

 Hawaii, and the Philippines, and of the brown peoples of the Pacific Ocean, 

 emphasizing, if desirable, the inhabitants of our own insular possessions. 



For long generations after removal to other areas and even to other 

 environments than those in which hereditary characteristics were fixed, many 

 such characteristics persist and reappear in the descendants. Thus the Irish 



