44 NATIONALITY AND RACE 



of modern Europe. The main physical characters 

 by which these are identified relate to the skull, 

 to the colouration and to the stature. The form of 

 the skull is best measured, for racial purposes, by the 

 cranial index, that is to say by the breadth of the 

 skull taken above the insertion of the ears, stated as 

 a percentage of the greatest length in the middle line 

 measured from front to back. If a skull were as 

 broad as it was long, the cranial index would be 100 ; 

 if it were only half as broad as it was long, the cranial 

 index would be 50. The extreme limits, among 

 living races, are from about 62 to 103. Indices below 

 75 reveal themselves to the eye as long heads, and 

 the cranial type is termed dolichocephalic. A head 

 with a cranial index of about 70, such as might be 

 seen in an extreme type from Scandinavia, or in an 

 average Berber from Tunis, would appear very long 

 indeed. Indices above 80 just begin to appear round 

 and are known as br achy cephalic. A head with an 

 index of about 94, such as might be seen in a Lapp 

 or in a French Savoyard, would appear very round 

 indeed. My own head, which has a cranial index of 

 about 8 1, is unusually broad for a native of Great 

 Britain, but this would hardly be noticed except by 

 a hatter who has to widen a stock size for me, just 

 as he has to lengthen the same stock size for a col- 

 league of mine whose cranial index is about 75. There 

 is almost no reason to suspect that the cranial index 

 is directly under the influence of the environment ; 

 it appears to be an inherited racial character. 



Investigation of the colouration of the human body 

 shows that both the influence of the environment 

 and racial inheritance are concerned. We see the 



