Hrdlicka. 15 



tomed to close examinations of either children or adults. Those 

 who have closely examined numerous individuals know that a 

 bodv perfect in all its parts is rare in any class of either 

 young subjects or grown people. This fact can be appreciated by 

 every intelligent observer, even though he be not an anthropologist, 

 if he will closely scrutinize his acquaintances, or his friends, and 

 even himself and his own children. He will see so many irregular 

 ears, teeth, heads, faces, etc., that instead of regarding 14 per cent, 

 as too small a percentage of normality, he will wonder at the extent 

 of this proportion. 



It will be noticed from the above figures that the girls show a 

 better physical standing in both the white and colored children, and 

 also that the colored boys seem to be physically somewhat inferior 

 to the white ones. But it should be remembered in the first place 

 that we have not examined the genital organs and the gluteal region 

 of the female children. If we eliminate these same items with the 

 boys, we obtain as entirely typical 89, or 14 per cent., of the white, 

 and 7, or 10.6 per cent., of the colored subjects, which proportions 

 are nearer to those obtained in the girls. I hardly doubt but that, 

 would we examine also the above-mentioned parts in the female 

 children, the proportion of abnormalities in the two sexes would be 

 nearly alike. As to the somewhat greater apparent inferiority of 

 the colored boys, I am afraid that the number of these examined is 

 too small to allow us to form any definite conclusions. It has been 

 always my experience, in examinations outside of the Juvenile Asy- 

 lum, to find the negroes in the average physically superior to the 

 whites and possessing less of abnormalities, which fact is also well 

 exemplified in our colored girls, and will be shown in the item where 

 will be stated the proportions of abnormalities to the different 

 groups of children with the same abnormalities. 



Out of the remaining children, that is, those who show one or 

 several atypical physical characters, there were 112, or 17.7 per 

 cent., white, and 11, or 16.7 per cent., colored boys, and J2, or 263 

 per cent., white, and 5, or 19.2 per cent., colored girls, who pre- 

 sented only one single abnormality. The abnormality which these 

 children showed was in many cases but a slight one, and we really 

 ought to count most of the individuals of this group among the 

 entirely normal subjects. 



