184 
Mr Myers , The Ethnology of Modern Egypt. 
folk, showing an inclination to vary in two or three distinct direc- 
tions, towards the Caucasian, the Negroid, or even the Mongoloid. 
The same tendency is also shown among the inhabitants of our 
own shores. There is hardly any test of Negroid or Mongoloid 
character (save that of colour), which would not embrace a small 
but a certain number of our most purely bred fellow-countrymen*. 
Europeans show accidental variations in the direction, for example, 
of obliquely directed axes of the eyes or of frizzly hair. Such 
accidental variations I assume to have been present in the 
aboriginal Egyptian population, and I hold that environment has 
been the selecting factor which has intensified and made per- 
manent one or other of these accidental variations. 
It would, of course, be absurd to say that a broader nose or 
a more projecting jaw is essential for a longer life in Upper as 
compared with Lower Egypt. But I believe that correlated with 
these physical features there are certain unknown physiological 
factors which make life easier to sustain in the dry, warm weather 
of Upper Egypt than in the wetter, cooler and more fertile regions 
near the Mediterranean. 
On the other hand, I am far from denying that sporadic ad- 
mixture with the Sudanese or with Levantine peoples is without 
effect or that it has not taken place. We may admit the act 
and the effect of occasional admixture and yet feel convinced that 
alone such admixture is insufficient to explain the difficulties at 
issue. 
To sum up. There is no anthropometric ( despite the historical ) 
evidence that the popidation of Egypt, past or present, is composed 
of several different races. The probabilities are all in favour of 
the view which regards the Egyptians always as a homogeneous 
people who have varied now towards Caucasian, now towards 
Negroid characters according to environment, showing such close 
anthropometric affinity to Libyan , Arabian and like neighbouring 
peoples , showing such variability and possibly such power of absorp- 
tion, that from the anthropometric standpoint no evidence is obtain- 
able that the modern Egyptians have been appreciably affected by 
other than sporadic Negroid admixture. 
* This fact dispels the following objection adduced by Thomson and Mclver in 
The Ancient Races of the Thebaid : — “No one would allow that a negro nose and a 
European nose are simply legitimate deviations from a single race type. And yet 
these are the extremes which occur in our series” (p. 50). I contend that extremes 
do meet and overlap, and that in the case of Egypt the margin of overlapping 
is still further widened by sporadic Sudanese and Levantine admixture. 
