106 
HINTS TO TRAVELLERS. 
tribe or nation. While such portrait-groups are admirable for giving the 
general idea of a race, characteristic features belonging to it should be 
treated separately. For instance, to do justice to the Tartar eye or the 
Australian forehead, the individual feature must be carefully sketched 
or photographed large. 
How deceptive mere unmeasured impressions of size may be is shown 
by the well-known example of the Patagonians, who, though really only 
tall men (averaging 5 feet 11 inches), long had the reputation of a race of 
giants. Such measurements as any traveller can take with a measuring- 
tape and a three-foot rule with sliding square are good if taken with 
proper precautions. As the object of the anthropologist is to get a 
general idea of a race, it may be in some respects misleading to measure 
at random one or two individuals, who are perhaps not fair specimens. 
If only a few can be measured, they should be selected of ordinary average 
build, full-grown but not aged. What is much better is to measure a 
large number (twenty to fifty) of persons taken indiscriminately as they 
come, and to record the measurements of each with sex, age, name, locality, 
&c. Such a table can afterwards be so classified as to show not only the 
average or mean size, but the proportion of persons who vary more or 
less from that mean size; in fact, it represents on a small scale the 
distribution of stature, &c., in the whole people. Gigantic or dwarfish 
individuals, if not deformed, are interesting as showing to what extremes 
the race may run. The most ordinary measurements are height, girth 
round chest, fathom or length of outstretched arms, length of arm from 
shoulder and leg from hip, length of hand and foot. The traveller may 
find that such measuring of another race shows very different stature and 
girth from that of his own companions, who, if they are well-grown Euro¬ 
peans, may stand 5 feet 8 inches to 6 feet, and measure 34 to 86 inches 
round the chest. Beyond this, he will find that the relative proportions 
of parts of the body differ from those he is accustomed to. An example 
of this is seen by placing Europeans and negroes side by side, and 
noticing how much nearer the knee the negro's finger-tips will reach. 
It will be found that body measurement needs skill in taking the corre¬ 
sponding points, and in fact all but the simplest measures require some 
knowledge of anatomy. This is especially the case with skull measure¬ 
ments. There are instruments for taking the dimensions of the living 
head, and with care and practice the untrained observer may get at 
