10 Proceedings of Royal Society of Edinburgh. [sess. 
are often very prominent, and the face is frequently so flat, the 
eyes are so narrow, and the mouth is so big, that one is inclined 
to speculate as to the possibility of environment having induced 
some latent Mongoloid strain, inherited from prehistoric times, ere 
Iceland was colonised, to develop, or even whether environment 
alone could possibly have produced a similarity to the Esquimaux, 
not inherited at all. However, the time has not come to settle, or- 
even to seriously discuss, such questions, and, in any case, they are 
beyond the point in dealing with the Faroemen, in whom there is- 
little, if any, trace of any such phenomenon. All that can be said 
with reference to the point at issue is, that two observers who have- 
examined the faces of the Faroemen get very different results with 
regard to the facial index, and that there is reason to believe 
that were a large number of Icelanders examined, they would be- 
found to have considerably broader and flatter faces than the 
Faroemen. 
The bigonial breadth is another measurement that depends very 
largely upon the individual observer, and probably has a very dif- 
ferent relationship to the same measurement on the skull in different 
subjects. In taking it on the living person it is by no means easy 
to regulate the pressure exerted by the points of the callipers upon 
the soft tissues, and the degree or absence of such pressure makes- 
a very great difference in the results obtained, while the extent to 
which the muscles which work the jaw are developed also influences- 
them considerably. Personally, I now make it a practice to draw 
the skin as tight as possible in taking this measurement, and to- 
press in the points of the callipers as far as they will go without 
injuring the subject, believing that in this way it is possible to get 
a more uniform standard of ‘ comparison, both as regards different 
individuals and as regards the difference between the skull and the 
living head. It is probable, however, that many anthropometrists- 
take care to exert as little pressure as possible, though it is obvious 
that if this be done, the measurement must vary even more with 
the muscular development and the amount of adipose tissue than 
with the true breadth of the skeletal support. The mean bigonial 
breadth in my series, taken as described, is 111*8 mm. — 2T6 mm. 
less than the mean bizygomatic breadth — and the extremes are 128 
and 100. The bigonial index, that is, the index obtained by the 
