116 ADAPTATION AND PROGRESS 
observations and measurements of more than 25,000,000 persons 
carried on by different authorities, including those by himself, 
have as one aim “ to show the relation which has arisen between 
the geography of a country and the character of its people and its 
institutions,” but more specifically to separate if possible the 
factors of “ nature ” and “ nurture ” in the racial composition and 
ethnic peculiarities of the peoples of Europe. 
Race, with Professor Ripley, is not to be identified with political 
boundaries, language or culture,' but is to be determined by 
characters that are inheritable, such as shape of the head, face 
form, pigmentation, stature and shape of the nose, — characters 
now designated as Mendelian; but among these he holds that the 
head form is most permanent, so the best ultimate criterion. In 
considering the head form he says that no correlation has been 
discovered as yet between this or indeed between the absolute 
size of the head and intellectual capacity.2. A map of the world 
showing the distribution of head forms indicates that a broad 
headed race occupies central Asia and a strip on the extreme 
north; a medium headed race, or a mixed people, the central 
and eastern part of Europe and nearly all of the Americas except 
the west, while a long-headed race occupies Africa, Australia, 
Melanesia, western and southern Europe and the extreme north 
of the new world.’ This distribution coincides roughly with that 
of the racial divisions of Flower and Giddings‘ based on color 
of the skin. 
In discussing the best criterion of race our author shows that 
pigmentation, though often correlated with head form, is more 
subject to environmental influences than the latter character,5 
so, too, stature, which is often an ontogenetic variation due to 
congestion of population, occupation, and insufficient nutrition; 
that head form is better, also, than color and form of the hair 
which seem to change with slight race mixture.® 
The particular problem of the author, to analyze the racial 
composition of Europe, is especially difficult as this part of the 
! Races in Europe, ch.I, pp. 214, 454f. 4 Principles of Sociology, p. 231. 
2 Tbid., pp. 39 f. 5 Races in Europe, chs. IV and XXI. 
3 Tbid., p. 42. § Ibid., p. 461. 
