Il6 ADAPTATION AND PROGRESS 



observations and measurements of more than 25,000,000 persons 

 carried on by different authorities, including those by himself, 

 have as one aim " to show the relation which has arisen between 

 the geography of a country and the character of its people and its 

 institutions," but more specifically to separate if possible the 

 factors of " nature " and " nurture " in the racial composition and 

 ethnic peculiarities of the peoples of Europe. 



Race, with Professor Ripley, is not to be identified with political 

 boimdaries, language or culture,^ but is to be determined by 

 characters that are inheritable, such as shape of the head, face 

 form, pigmentation, stature and shape of the nose, — characters 

 now designated as Mendelian; but among these he holds that the 

 head form is most permanent, so the best ultimate criterion. In 

 considering the head form he says that no correlation has been 

 discovered as yet between this or indeed between the absolute 

 size of the head and intellectual capacity .^ A map of the world 

 showing the distribution of head forms indicates that a broad 

 headed race occupies central Asia and a strip on the extreme 

 north; a medium headed race, or a mixed people, the central 

 and eastern part of Europe and nearly all of the Americas except 

 the west, while a long-headed race occupies Africa, Australia, 

 Melanesia, western and southern Europe and the extreme north 

 of the new world.^ This distribution coincides roughly with that 

 of the racial divisions of Flower and Giddings ^ based on color 

 of the skin. 



In discussing the best criterion of race our author shows that 

 pigmentation, though often correlated with head form, is more 

 subject to environmental influences than the latter character,^ 

 so, too, stature, which is often an ontogenetic variation due to 

 congestion of population, occupation, and insufficient nutrition; 

 that head form is better, also, than color and form of the hair 

 which seem to change with slight race mixture.^ 



The particular problem of the author, to analyze the racial 

 composition of Europe, is especially difficult as this part of the 



1 Races in Europe, ch. I, pp. 214, 454 f . * Principles of Sociology, p. 23 1 . 



2 Ibid., pp. 39 f. ^ Races in Europe, chs. IV and XXI. 

 * IhU., p. 42. « Ibid., p. 461. 



