A NOTE ON ANTHROPOMETRY 
13 
persistence of a type subsidiary to the main type. Examples 
of all these can be got in East Africa. 
The fact should be mentioned that the results of anthro- 
pometry are of no immediate practical value. Nothing can 
be predicted of a man’s character or capacity from the physical 
type he belongs to. Not everyone with a nose as broad and 
flat as Socrates is a philosopher, nor does a nose like Wellington’s 
argue a good soldier. No shape of head or any other physical 
feature is the best. Further, mental characteristics of races 
seem to change. The Jew was once a cultivator and only 
engaged in trade and finance when he was cut off from the 
soil by Roman conquerors and Christian persecutors. The 
Scot, now known as canny and hard-fisted, was known to 
the Europe of the Middle Ages as 4 Scotus perfervidus.’ In 
still earlier times he seems to have had a much less savoury 
reputation. Gibbon records the unpleasant tradition that 
the inhabitants of the Clyde Valley were once cannibals. 
One thing that does appear probable is that mixture up 
to a certain point is advantageous. The modern world was 
born and cradled in the eastern Mediterranean basin, the place 
of conflict and commingling of three continents since the 
dawn of history. In recent centuries indeed from a number 
of causes words like patriot and nationality have come to 
have narrower boundaries. The phrase now common in 
law, 4 of European descent,’ would have seemed strange indeed 
to Justinian. 
But absorptions of widely different racial types still go on 
in the modern world. The Hungarians are an Asiatic people, 
who, by a political accident, took sides with the West rather than 
with the East. Now, in their religious, social and industrial life 
they are typical Europeans, while their kinsfolk of Central Asia 
are still semi-savage nomads. In our own time Maoris and 
North American Indians are rapidly being absorbed by a 
European race. The magic of the term pure-bred comes from 
its associations with biology. But there is the difference that 
the scientific farmer knows what to work for, while we do not 
know what types in men to breed. If we ever learn it is safe 
to say that no one race will provide all the qualities of the best 
breeds. 
