THE RACIAL GEOGRAPHY OF EUROPE. 



197 



considerable at a given stature. There is, however, for each coun- 

 try or group of men some point about which the physical trait 

 clusters. Thus the largest percentage of a given stature among 

 the Scotch occurs at about five feet nine and a half inches. Yet 

 a very large number of them, about five per cent, fall within the 

 group of five feet seven inches (1*70 metres) that is to say, no taller 



than an equal percentage of the Ligurians and even in Sardinia 

 there is an appreciable number of that stature. We must under- 

 stand therefore, when we say that the Scotch are a tall people or a 

 long-headed or blond one, that we mean thereby not that all the 

 people are peculiar in this respect even to a slight degree, but 

 merely that in this region there are more specimens of these spe- 

 cial types than elsewhere. Still it remains that the great mass of 

 the people are merely neutral. This is a more serious obstacle 

 to overcome than direct contradictions. They merely whet the 

 appetite. Our most difficult problem is to separate the typical 

 wheat from the noncommittal straw; to isolate our racial types 

 from the general mean of the continent. 



We have now seen how limited are the racial results attain- 

 able by the first of our two means of identification that is, the 

 purely anthropological one. It has appeared that only in the 

 most simple conditions are the several traits constant and faith- 

 ful to one another in their association in the same persons. Nor 

 are we justified in asking for more. Our three racial types are 

 not radically distinct seeds which, once planted in the several parts 

 of Europe, have there taken root ; and, each preserving its pecul- 

 iarities intact, have spread from those centers outward until they 



