ON THE TYPICAL KACES IN THE BRITISH ISLES. 271 



tion : ' and Professor His was quoted as having arrived at a similar con- 

 clusion from an investigation of the ethnology of Switzerland.' 



Professor Kollmann, too, of Bale, believes that it is quite possible to 

 distinguish original or main racial characteristics in a mixed population, 

 owing to a capacity in skulls and facial skeletons to joreserve their 

 pristine types long after the colour of the hair and eyes have changed 

 by crossing. A complete fusion of component elements, the distinguished 

 Professor is convinced, never absolutely occurs. 



'Reversion to original types. — Besides, however, these composite forms, 

 eminent anthropologists recognise a law through the operation of which 

 reversion takes place, under favourable circumstances, to original types. 

 Drs. Beddoe, Barnard Davis, Flower, Rolleston, Thurnam, and Turner, 

 in this counti'y, and Morton, Broca, Quatrefages, Retzins, and Virchow, 

 abroad, are in accord in believing, from craniological evidence, that the 

 characteristics of prehistoric races exist at the present day ; Professor 

 Quatrefages, than whom the Committee believe there could not be 

 a safer authority, even affirming that representatives of the fossil types of 

 man are still to be found amongst us.'- 



Height, and colour of the hair and eyes, insufficient as evidence of race. — 

 Assuming the correctness of Professor Kollmann's deductions that hair 

 and eyes (permanent in a pure race) change by crossing more easily than 

 skull-forms ; dark tints, except under conditions of intensity, joined with 

 diminutive stature and complete doHchocephalism, such as unmistakably 

 point to the race styled Iberian, simply indicate, according to the 

 index of nigrescence established by Dr. Beddoe, more or less mixture in 

 blood. Where, too, the hair and eyes are light, and the stature tall, in 

 the absence of information respecting the features generally, it would be 

 impossible to pronounce any individual to be Celt or Saxon, Dane or 

 Swede. 



Birth of parents and grandparents in the same locality no proof of race. 

 An experiment made for the purpose of ascertaining how far the birth 

 of parents and the grandparents, on both sides, in certain districts would 

 assist in the selection of pure local types, resulted in the conclusion that 

 the requirement mentioned, though securing the absence of recent foreign 

 admixture, failed as a sufficient test, by affording no evidence that move- 

 ments had not occurred in the population at an earlier date. 



Photographic portraits obtained under the above-mentioned conditions 

 do not, as a fact, assist materially in the definition of racial character- 

 istics ; the features exhibit moi'e than one type even in districts supposed 

 to have been peopled by a given race ; though, owing to the law already 

 alluded to, pure types may be sought for, and would more frequently be 

 found amongst such populations than elsewhere. 



This, and other considerations, led a sub- Committee, in 1880, to 

 collect in preference, from different localities, a certain number of portraits, 

 all of which exhibited similar features ; and then an equal jiumber dis- 

 tinguished by characteristics in all respects diffisrent from the first series, 

 but equally homogeneous. They presented contrasts which appeared to 

 be racial. 



Method of Identification of Types adopted hy the Committee. — Approaching 

 the subject from the standpoint of comparative physiognomy alluded to 

 in the last paragraph, but experimenting in the first instance on the facial 



^ Brit. Ass. Rep, 1875, p. 148. * Crania Ethnica, p. 28. 



