VOL. XVIII. (l) 



THE PRESIDENT'S ADDRESS 



In the second place, another suggestion may be made. 

 We know that the movements of the peoples in the earlier 

 stages of humanity were certainly not less constant than in 

 the present times. May we suspect that the Ipswich man 

 represents the intrusion of some foreign race ? 



Thirdly, the discovery suggests some doubts on the cur- 

 rent doctrine that the form of the skull is the final test of race. 

 It is needless to say that between unassociated races, for in- 

 stance, between the brachycephahc, or short-headed Mongol, 

 and the dolichocephalic, or long-headed Australian native, the 

 contrast of skull form is definite and conclusive, and the same 

 condition of things, according to Dr. John Beddoe, the great 

 local anthropologist, whose recent death we deplore, may be 

 found in this country. Whether the varied types of humanity 

 were produced by separate and local processes of evolution 

 from some anthropoid, or whether the evolution took place at 

 some single centre, and the differences are the result of the 

 influence of environment on the individual, it is unnecessary 

 to enquire. The differences of skull form at these extremes are 

 obvious, and the anthropologist must do his best to explain 

 them. But the case is different with mixed races, and at the 

 present time among a new and increasing school of anthropo- 

 logists greater stress is now being laid on environment, and the 

 form of the skull, instead of being regarded as the only part 

 of the human frame which survives unchanged from epoch to 

 epoch, is now believed to possess considerable plasticity under 

 the control of the environment, that is to say climate, food 

 supply and the like'. Dr John Beddoe has taught us that in 

 this country the citizen develops, by some process of selection, 

 a longer and narrower head than the countryman, a fact ob- 

 served both in Bristol and in London.' In the same way, it 

 has been found that among American immigrants the change 

 of environment does in some way, which we are at present 

 unable to explain, modify the skull form to an important 

 extent. 



Various attempts have been made to discriminate the 

 elements of the population of these islands on the basis of 

 differences of hair colour, eye tints, skin pigmentation and the 



I. The Huxley Lecture, Journal Anthropological Institute, xxxv. (1905) p. 221 



