change in sea-level, and the destructive action of the waves is certainly far less here than in most other epicontinental seas. Sedimentation also is here less than on other shores, since the rivers and torrents entering the sea carry but little material from the karstic limestones of the islands and mainland. The cold underground water of the karstic region also, which wells up in countless springs on the sea-floor, lowers the temperature of the bottom water greatly, and thus checks the development of organic life, which would otherwise cover thickly the small irregularities of the sea-floor.

On the other hand, the secondary precipitation of travertine from the lime-carrying water was in most cases favourable to the petrifaction of the remains left behind by primitive man. The so-called kitchenmiddens are not limited to the shores of northern Europe but occur elsewhere. I myself saw in New South Wales near Ballina huge mounds of this kind, rising 5-6 m. above the level of the adjacent land, and originally covering many acres. Similar high and extensive kitchen-middens are known in Tasmania, belonging to the most primitive human race, living chiefly on the gifts of the sea on the coasts. From the later stages of the Ice Age we might possibly discover on the submerged lowlands the beginnings of the first even larger artificial barrows and of megalithic constructions.

If the sea retreated at the time of the last great glaciation (Würm) so that the greater part of the straits of our days in the north-eastern part of the Adriatic Sea were valleys of the mainland, its return would be gradual, and must have continued up to a period not long before the beginning of historical times, before it attained the present shore-line, or even a somewhat higher one, as some features seem to indicate. It seems, then, as if the sea-floor off the coast of the north-eastern Adriatic is theoretically the most promising field for a search for the remains of former human settlements. Submarine boats casting a strong light on the sea-floor and driven slowly, or even perhaps simply boats with a glass bottom and artificial light, might help to discover the outlines of heaps containing possibly the remains. of man's former activities. Since, especially in the vicinity of the submarine springs, the sea-water here is very transparent, in this respect also the Gulf of Quarnero seems best fitted for a systematic investigation of the sea-floor.

BIBLIOGRAPHY.

(1.) ECKARDT, "Der exakte, meteorologisch-klimatologische Beweis für die Gleichzeitigkeit der diluvialen Eiszeit," Petermann's Geographische Mitteilungen (1917), pp. 206-208.

(2.) SÜSSMILCH, C. A., "An Introduction to the Geology of New South Wales," (Sydney, 1922), p. 92 et seq.

DAVID, T. W. E., "Evidence of Glacial Action in Australia in Permocarboniferous Times," Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society (London, 1896), pp. 289-300.

(3.) PENCK, A., "Die Formen der Erdoberfläche und Verschiebungen der Klimagürtel," Sitzungsberichte d. k. Preuss. Akad. d. Wissenschaften, iv. (1914), pp. 77-97. See also "The Shifting of the Climatic Belts," S.G.M., xxx. (1914), pp. 281-293.

TAYLOR, T. G., "Climatic Cycles and Evolution," The Geographical
Review (New York, 1919), pp. 289-328.

(4.) "Report of the Cainozoic Climate Committee," Report of the Fifteenth Meeting of the Australasian Association for the Advancement of Science (Melbourne, 1922), p. 346.

PASSARGE, S., "Das Problem der Skulptur-Inselberglandschaften," Petermann's Geogr. Mitteil (1924), p. 66.

(5.) ARLDT, TH., "Handbuch der Palaeographie" (Leipzig, vol. i. 1919, vol. ii. 1922).

(6.) PENCK, A., "Schwankungen des Meeresspiegels," Jahresbericht der Geographischen Gesellschaft in München für 1880 und 1881 (München, 1882). DRYGALSKI, E., "Die Geoiddeformationen der Eiszeit," Zeitschrift d. Ges. f. Erkunde (Berlin, 1887), p. 224.

PENCK, A., "Morphologie der Erdoberfläche" (Stuttgart, 1894), vol. ii. p. 660.

(7.) DALY. R. A., "Pleistocene Glaciation and the Coral Reef Problem." The American Journal of Science (New Haven, 1910), vol. xxx. pp. 297-301. DALY, R. A., "The Glacial-control Theory of Coral Reefs," Proceedings of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, vol. li. No. 4 (Boston, 1915), pp. 157-251.

(8.) MOLENGRAAF, G. A. F., "Modern Deep-sea Research in the East Indian Archipelago," The Geographical Journal, vol. lvii. (London, 1921), pp.

95-120.

(9.) DAVID, T. W. E., "Geological Evidence of the Antiquity of Man in the Commonwealth of Australia, with special reference to the Tasmanian Aborigines." R. M. Johnston Memorial Lecture. Papers and Proceedings of the Royal Society of Tasmania for the year 1923 (Hobart, 1924), pp. 109-150.

(10.) HEDLEY, C., "The Effect of the Bassian Isthmus upon the existing marine Fauna: A study in ancient Geography," Proceedings of the Linnean Society of New South Wales, xxviii. (Sydney, 1903), pp. 876-883.

(11.) TAYLOR, T. G., "The Evolution and Distribution of Race, Culture, and Language," The Geographical Review, vol. xi. (New York, 1921), pp.

54-119.

(12.) WOODS-JONES, F., "Coral and Atolls " (London, 1912), p. 221 et seq. (13.) ANDREWS, E. C., "The Framework of the Pacific," Proc. First Pan-Pacific Scientific Conference (Honolulu, 1921), pp. 875-881.

(14.) MACCULLOCH, A. R., "Lord Howe Island," The Australian Museum Magazine (1921), pp. 31-47. See also his addresses to the Linnean Society of N.S.W.

DANEŠ, J. V., “Pohroma na ostrově Lorda Howe." Širým světem, vol. i.

pp. 7-10.

(15.) Grund, A., "Die Entstehung und Geschichte des Adriatischen Meeres," Geographischer Jahresbericht aus Oesterreich, vi. (1907), p. 13.

CVIJIĆ, J., "Abraziona serija Jadranske obale i epirogenetski pokreti,"
Glasnik geografskog društva, vols. vii.-viii. (1922), p. 83 et seq.
CVIJIĆ, J., "Geomorfologija-Morphologie terrestre " (Belgrade, 1924).

PERPLEXITIES OF RACE: A REVIEW.1

By GEO. G. CHISHOLM, LL.D.

The value of this book to all who are interested in racial problems can hardly be over-estimated. This does not mean that the author's views are to be implicitly accepted. Geographers have long been too well acquainted with the author's habit of mind to think that he would expect or desire this. But readers will have the pleasure of following the track of an eager, dispassionate and acute investigator, who has had unusual opportunities for direct observation and has read widely in the literature of the subject, and at every point rouses interest and stimulates thought by his suggestive and independent handling of the data. The author points out the difficulty of defining race (p. 5). Strictly, he says, races should be defined only in terms of heredity (p. 6), but he does not profess to adhere to a conception of race that would meet this requirement, but apparently thinks of races as great groups of men that can be recognised as distinguished by prevailing bodily, or, more important, mental and moral characteristics (pp. 5-6). The aim of the book is stated (p. 7) to be to discover if possible how migration, racial mixture, and natural selection co-operate with mutations in giving rise to the character of races or racial stocks. Elsewhere (pp. 215-6) he tells us that the central problem of the book is the question' whether the innate qualities of a race determine its geographical distribution, or whether the geographical, economic, and social conditions pick out certain types of character for preservation, and thus determine their distribution. And in trying to answer this question he recognises (p. 300) that "racial character, or that which we commonly suppose to be racial character, arises from extremely complex causes," capable, however, as he points out a few pages before (p. 286), of being subsumed under three great factors, "inheritance, physical environment, with its multitudinous effects upon nutrition, health, occupations, and mode of life; and . . . social environment and the vast mass of ideas, habits, inventions, and discoveries which are handed down from one generation to another." And while he always lays stress on the importance of inheritance among these factors he had already suggested (p. 92) that "environment may be as potent as race in determining people's capacities and achievements.

These quotations are enough in themselves to reveal the perplexities connected with the problems of race, but when we take into account the contentions of other writers more or less discussed in the volume our sense of those perplexities is increased, and it may be said that one of the chief elements of value in this book is that it is likely to aid greatly in preventing the growth in anthropology and ethnography of a body of traditional dogma. The old assumption of the pre-eminence of

1 The Character of Races. By Ellsworth Huntington. New York, London: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1924. Price 25s. net.

the long-headed Nordics finds no countenance here. Both Griffith Taylor in the Geographical Review (1919 and 1921) and Roland B. Dixon of Harvard in The Racial History of Man (1923), he points out, agree in regarding the round head as biologically the highest and most specialised, because it can hold the largest brain in proportion to its surface and weight" (p. 75), and both agree also in holding that "our present seeming racial superiority is only an accident" (p. 77). On these points the author says neither yea nor nay, but provisionally (p. 83) he follows Dixon in naming and describing eight main races or types founded on head-form as "the most permanent and distinctive of racial traits" (p. 75). And yet he does not treat the controversy roused by the observations of Boas on the alleged changes in the head-form of Italian immigrants into America as finally settled (p. 74), and he mentions (p. 31) that Vern at Cambridge, England, found that students during their course at the university there showed an increase in the breadth of their skulls.

For the most part the author keeps in mind the difficulties of his subject and is cautious in his statements and candid in pointing out the degree of probability in the conclusions drawn from his arguments, yet one cannot but wish at times that he had been even more cautious. He speaks of the complete absence in China of the feeling of public responsibility (pp. 159, 171), and in this, it must be granted, he has the support of other observers. Yet, how is this assertion to be reconciled even with his own statement (p. 175) that when in times of dire distress Chinese are compelled to leave their district in search of a living elsewhere and seal up their houses before going it is a point of honour not to break into a sealed house! How is it to be reconciled with the careful maintenance of the irrigation works of the Chengtu plain for generation after generation of which Mrs. Bishop speaks with such high admiration (Geog. Jour., x. p. 24) and with much else that we are told by other visitors to China? How is it to be reconciled with the following remarks of Abbé Huc? "When, in the sixteenth century, the Catholic missionaries arrived, bearing the message of the Gospel to the innumerable nations who form collectively the Chinese Empire, the spectacle that presented itself to their observation was calculated to strike them with astonishment, and even with admiration. Europe, which they had just quitted, was in the convulsions of intellectual and political anarchy. . . . China, on the contrary, stood in some measure at the zenith of her prosperity. Her political and civil institutions worked with admirable regularity. . . . The imaginations of the missionaries could not but be powerfully affected by this immense Empire, with its numerous and orderly population, its fields so skilfully cultivated, its great cities, its magnificent rivers, its fine system of canals, and its entire and prosperous civilisation. The comparison was certainly at that time not to the advantage of Europe."

"1

1 The Chinese Empire, English translation (Longmans, 1855), vol. i. p. xxii.

It does not need to be pointed out to the author that when we are speaking of racial characters we must not consider them as they are at any particular time.

Generally the author is satisfactory as to his references, but one regrettable exception may be noted. In the first chapter he gives an interesting and highly remarkable account of the migrations of the Khmers, but neither in the text nor in the list of authorities at the end can we find any clue to the sources of his information.

From the author's account, confirmed by the great body of the book, it will be seen that its aim is purely scientific, yet it is quite clear from sundry passages that the motive for writing it was in a large measure practical, to direct attention, in view of the fact that "racial character is plastic" (p. 129), to the possibility and desirability of moulding it to higher forms. He lays great emphasis on over-population as a factor in bringing the processes of natural selection into operation. See particularly his account of its influence in China (pp. 156-7, 172-7, with the instructive quotations from a doctorial thesis by a Chinese lady student in America entitled Economic History of China). "We," he says, "who live in a land where there is always a large surplus, have not the faintest idea of the miseries and the constant anxiety that result from overpopulation and a low standard of living" (p. 172). "Not far from Peking a considerable number of villages do not expect to raise food enough to support themselves more than perhaps nine or ten months even in good years. Their land is not sufficient" (p. 174). And he indicates further on (pp. 181-2) that where the people depend on agriculture and the production is inadequate no amount of law-making will prevent the poor from mortgaging "their land, their services, or their own selves to the rich."

On p. 334 he contends that "the growing density of population [in the world generally] bids fair within a generation or two to bring a state of stress almost as great as would glaciation." But this prospect he regards as no reason for despair. "Man's future," he says, "will depend largely upon his capacity for social organisation and his ability to work for the common good" (p. 332). And of this ability he is hopeful. After giving some instances of actual advances made by man through the operation of natural selection he goes on to ask (p. 372)"If such things can happen under Nature's seemingly haphazard régime, why should they not happen ten times more often under the sane direction of science that is gradually evolving?" "This era of material progress seems to be nearing its climax (ibid). But "we faintly see the beginnings of another and greater revolution. It is the biological revolution. . . . Our aim for ten thousand years has been the mastery of things rather than the mastery of ourselves. Yet already the revolution is at hand" (p. 373).

Such considerations may seem to be too remote to be of any value, but I, for one, rejoice to think that we have in the author of this book a young and vigorous intellect habituated to a world-wide outlook