May 24, 1912] 
tioned (viz., Boas’s conclusions), to the great sur- 
prise of many anthropologists, some of whom have 
expressed their incredulity. Not having seen any 
criticism of Boas, but sounds of retraction on the 
part of Boas himself, I wish to show how the 
method which he followed is inexact, and why we 
can place no faith in his surprising conclusions 
(p. 4). 
Professor Sergi confines himself to the 
cephalic index, but he rightly says that what 
is true of the form of the head is equally true 
of the other data. He continues: 
If we consider the other physical forms of the 
descendants of immigrants, eur conclusion acquires 
a wider and more general significance, viz., that 
no change of human physical characteristics 
through the influence of environment has been 
proved. If, as a matter of fact, there is no 
change in the physical forms of immigrants in 
America, the process according to which this 
change must have theoretically come about is an 
absurd one (p. 10). 
The main points of my criticism of Pro- 
fessor Boas’s report of 1910 refer not to 
classification of the cephalic index, but to the 
causes of its changes. The conventional classi- 
fication of head forms may or may not be 
irrelevant. My critique did not treat this 
problem at all; it only recalled to Professor 
Boas the fact that he uses familiar technical 
terms such as “type,” “ longheaded,” “ short- 
headed,” which everybody knows but which 
do not agree with his figures or tables. He 
says: - 
The east European Hebrew who has a very 
tround head, becomes more long-headed; the south 
Italian, who in Italy has an exceedingly long head, 
becomes more short-headed (p. 7); that the long- 
headed foreign-born Italians become more short- 
headed in America (p. 51). 
In regard to the cephalic index Professor 
Sergi, after presenting a table on page 7 of 
his critique, says: 
If we examine the averages (media) of the 
cephalic index, we doubtless find that for those 
born in America there is a diminution of from 
one to two units (or a little more) as compared 
with those born outside of America. It is this 
which Boas has shown in his numerous tables. 
But does this diminution in the averages show, as 
SCIENCE 
823 
Boas pretends, a change in the form of the skull 
of Jews born in America? Apparently, yes, but 
in reality, no; because the averages are simply the 
tude expressions of the composition of the series 
(p. 7). 
That Professor Boas’s many sweeping con- 
clusions on the form of the head are based on 
averages only is shown throughout his report 
(see especially, pp. 8, 48, 9, 12). Dr. Sergi is 
right in saying: 
The series vary in their composition as might 
be expected and the averages do not give the 
character of the composition. In fact these would 
seem to indicate that certain groups are more and 
others less brachycephalic while the truth is, that 
some groups contain more brachycephalics (p. 6). 
On p. 8 Professor Sergi gives a compari- 
soa and concludes that the real result of it 
is that only the proportions of the classes are 
altered; and therefore while they exist in different 
proportions, there still exist dolichocephalics, meso- 
cephalics, brachycephalices and hyperbrachyce- 
phalies among those born in America. Therefore 
this difference of proportion of the classes can not 
be said to depend on the change of the form of 
the skull, but upon the paternal and maternal 
ancestry, the Jews being immigrants from every 
part of Europe. Boas does not say from which 
group his subjects come. In other words, they are 
the children of every European nationality to which 
the Jews belong (p. 8). 
On p. 10 Dr. Sergi says: 
But Boas would have us also believe that the 
children of immigrants who live in America ten 
years or longer undergo a more distinct and pro- 
nounced change, while the parents undergo none 
whatever. We should then have to suppose that a 
general change must have been going on in the 
organism of the immigrants which modified their 
generatric cells, the ova and the spermatozoa, so 
that in the embryonal and later development the 
organism of the children appears modified in form. 
Who can support such a theory? It appears even 
more absurd inasmuch as it operates in two direc- 
tions opposed to each other, the brachycephalics 
seemingly tending toward dolichocephaly (i. e., 
with the Jews), and the dolichocephalics tending 
toward brachycephaly (the case of the Sicilians), 
by virtue—says Boas—of the environment. The 
change in the generatric cells of immigrants would 
have to follow in two opposite directions, being 
most rapid (according to Boas) in the immigrants 
