4 
and from north to south. The Indians east of the Rocky mountains 
are generally of medium height, with here and there, particularly 
among the Iroquois, a tendency to tallness; but in British Columbia 
most of the natives are of short stature. The Indians of the Mac- 
kenzie basin, and most of the tribes in British Columbia, have round 
heads (i.e. are brachycephalic), whereas the Indians of the prairies 
and of eastern Canada are either medium-headed (mesocephalic) 
or, more rarely, long-headed (dolichocephalic). Even the breadth of 
the face varies considerably, although it is nearly always greater 
than among Europeans; and the shape and height of the nose differ 
widely from tribe to tri})e, even from individual to individual. 
Are these differences weighty enough to counterbalance the 
resemblances we listed previously? Do they preclude the possibility 
that all the various tribes in the Dominion have sprung from one 
common stock? At the present time no criteria for classifying the 
numerous varieties of mankind have met with universal acceptance. 
Earlier writers usually selected the colour of the skin as their guide, 
and divided mankind into three principal races, the white, the yellow, 
and the black. A few, like Keane, then subdivifled the w^hites into 
dark and light, and added a brown race to include the Polynesians, 
and a coppery red the inhabitants of America. Skin colour, however, 
ap]iears to be too unstable a characteristic to serve as a major cri- 
terion, so that most authorities now adopt in its place the colour and 
shape of the hair, or else the shape of the head (i.e., the ratio of its 
length to its breadth), and employ skin and eye colour, breadth of 
face, stature, and other features as secondary criteria only. How far 
any of these features have become fixed, liow far they may still vary 
with the environment, ami the variations become heritable, is as yet 
uncertain. Stature, indeed, seems to be more variable than head- 
form; and even head-form, if the results of recent investigations are 
confirmed, undergoes modification when a population is subjected to 
prolonged famine or migrates to a country where the climate and 
economic environment differ from those of its old home.i Tem- 
perature and humidity, again, have probablj^ played a large part 
in regulating the size of the nasal aperture, and consequently the 
shape of the entire nose; for, generally speaking, tropical man has 
1 CJ. Boas, F. : " Clian^os in Bodily Fonn of Dnscendants of Tmmicranls”; Thn Immigration Com- 
mission, Sen. Doc. No. 208 (WaKliington, 1010): Ivanovsky, .A.: “ Pliysical Modifications of the Popu- 
lation of Ru.ssia under Famine’’; .Am. Jour, of Phys. Anth., vol. vi, pp. 331-3.53 (October, 1923). 
