1903— 4 ] Mr N. Annandale on the People of the Faroes. 23 
characters of a race, and we do not yet know at all what is the 
physical result of crosses in the human species. The fact noted 
regarding the Faroe family whose ancestress came from Eastern 
Europe is of interest in this connection, although I am not 
able to give statistical details, for it shows how necessary 
it is that anthropologists should pay attention to that mysterious 
quality inherent in certain races and certain individuals 
— prepotency. Personally, I must express the great debt I 
owe to Professor D. J. Cunningham for calling my attention to 
this factor in ethnology, though it does not make the ethnologist’s 
task the easier. With regard to the measurements themselves, 
it must be remarked how great an allowance must always be 
made for the idiosyncrasy of the observer in anthropometry on 
the living person. Some men naturally measure too short, some 
too long, and a couple of millimetres’ divergency from ideal ac- 
curacy will often make a very much greater proportionate difference 
in an index where the numbers combined are small. If the observer 
would have even his own measurements of equal value on different 
occasions, he must take care to reproduce the conditions exactly, 
not only as regards his subjects, but also as regards himself ; and 
above all, he must not attempt to measure more than a very few 
individuals at a sitting, for no other kind of purely mechanical 
investigation is more fatiguing to the mind and body, and a tired 
man is not in a condition to measure accurately. 
By the combination of anthropometry with history and tradition 
it is possible to arrive at legitimate conclusions regarding the 
ethnology of the Faroes. The people, descended in the main from 
ancestors whose blood was somewhat mixed, but chiefly Norse, 
have remained more or less isolated for about a thousand years, 
except for casual immigration of persons and parties, who were 
probably £ Celtic ’ or Iberian, and who, it is safe to say, came 
either from Scotland, from Ireland, or from the intermediate isles. 
This casual admixture has taken place more frequently or in 
greater proportion, or the immigrants may have been more pre- 
potent, in the most southerly island of the group. In-breeding may 
possibly have dwarfed the stature of the race, but details regarding 
imbecility and deafness are so indefinite that they may be well 
ignored, and after many weeks spent on different occasions in 
