Abstract
PROF. RIPLEY, in his Huxley lecture delivered recently before the Royal Anthropological Institute, on,the European population of the United States, raised a number of novel and important problems, for the solution of which the evidence is at present insufficient. In contrast to Europe, where the existing races have grown up from the soil, in America they, “one may say, have dropped from the sky. They are in the land, but not yet an integral part of it. They are as yet unrelated to its physical environment.” Further, the influence of environment on this diverse population is as yet little more than a matter for speculation. The day has passed for assuming that the modern American type is a reversion to that of the American Indian; but for the future of this foreign population suddenly planted among new surroundings we must depend more upon speculation than upon prophecy, because as yet, except in the classical records of the armies recruited in the Civil War, anthropological statistics are not available.
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The European Population of the United States . Nature 79, 145–146 (1908). https://doi.org/10.1038/079145a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/079145a0