22 Proceedings of Royal Society of Edinburgh. [sess* 
water, so that they sank and were drowned. Mr Stanley Lane- 
Poole (9), moreover, in his Bavbary Corsairs , states that Murad, a 
German renegade, “ took three Algerine ships as far north as 
Denmark and Iceland, whence he carried off four hundred, some 
say eight hundred, captives . . . ,” and I have heard it stated in 
the Faroes that this expedition also visited these islands. Some 
years ago, while staying in the Westmann Isles, I took the trouble 
to translate the contemporary Icelandic accounts of Murad’s raid,, 
and of another, led by three Moorish captains, which also took 
place on the coast of Iceland in the same summer, that of 1627. 
These records (10) were collected and printed in Reykjavik about 
half a century ago. They contain no mention of a visit to the 
Faroes, and show that it is exceedingly improbable that any admix- 
ture of Algerian blood now exists even in Iceland. Between three 
and four hundred persons were taken prisoners by the two expedi- 
tions, and not more than forty, some of whom were women, got hack 
to Iceland, the great majority being from the Westmann Isles, to' 
which those who were ransomed by their friends or by the sub- 
scription raised for the purpose in Denmark returned. It is just 
possible that the women may have brought home with them 
children by Algerian masters, hut it is exceedingly improbable 
that this would have been permitted ; and even if they did, those 
who returned to the Westmann Isles, at any rate, have almost 
certainly left no descendants behind them, for all children, almost 
without exception, who were horn there died within a fortnight 
after birth of tetanus neonatorum 1 until quite recently, and the 
islands were constantly being repeopled from the north of Iceland,, 
a region which the corsairs did not visit (11, 12). 
Conclusions. 
My object, as regards the first part of this paper, has been 
critical rather than constructive, for I do not believe that 
measurements on the living person, even in series of considerable 
magnitude, can give more than a rough sketch of the physical 
1 The islanders ascribe the recent extinction of this disease to the fact that 
while new-born children were formerly laid on a mass of uncovered feathers, 
they are now placed on a covered mattress. 
