Hrdlicka. 



39 



by Dr. Franz Boas, who some years ago examined with Dr. West 

 numerous school children in Worcester, Mass. Dr. Boas informed 

 me that he found the children of poorer families to be on the average 

 perceptibly smaller than the children of well to do people. 



The heights of Italian children, which follow, will be seen to be 

 considerably below the heights of not only the children of American 

 parentage, but also .below the average heights of all the children 

 together in the institution. I have no data at hand by which I could 

 show whether these Italian children are below the average in stature 

 of Italian children outside the asylum. If we should compare these 

 figures with figures obtained from Italian children in the city of New 

 York, we would hardly find great differences, as most of the Ital- 

 ians here are poor people. 



Height — Italian Children. 



Sitting Height. 

 Tables 4 and 5 will show the sitting height as obtained on the chil- 

 dren of the institution, and the proportions of the sitting height, or 

 of the length of the lower extremities, to the total height of the body. 

 The interest lies principally in these latter named proportions. A 

 glance at the figures will show that in both the white and the negro 

 children of small age the proportion of the length of the lower limbs 

 to the total height of the body is comparatively small, and that it 

 increases with considerable precision and regularity during all the 

 years up to and possibly even beyond the age of puberty. This 

 means that as a child advances in life its limbs are growing in pro- 

 portion somewhat more rapidly than its body. In a new born infant 

 the lower limbs are very short. The greatest length of the lower 

 limbs seems to be attained from the thirteenth to sixteenth years of 

 an individual. I have myself but a very few data on children older 

 than 16, but from Dr. West's report* on the Worcester school chil- 



* Gerald Monteromery West, Arch, of Anthropol., XXII., p. 13 et seq.; in this connection 

 also Boas, The Growth of Children, Science, April g, '97. 



