Heredity in Anthropometric Traits

Abstract

A number of years ago I published the results of a study of heredity in head form which was based on material that Dr Maurice Fishberg had the great kindness to collect for me among the Russian Jews of New-York City.' The results seemed sufficiently interesting to justify a continuation of the work. This has been made possible by a grant from the Esther Herrman Fund of the Scientific Alliance of New York. While my first report was based on observations on 48 families, I have been able, through the kind assistance of Dr Fishberg and Mr Joseph Fish, to collect data relating to 192 families. The extended calculations were made by Dr A. B. Lewis. All the families from which measurements were collected were East European Jews, and almost all of them Russian Jews. I have confined myself to gathering measurements of length and width of head. Only in the first series of 48 families was the width of face also observed. The principal question that I have had to investigate is, whether there is a tendency in offspring to group themselves around the middle value of the parents (Galton's midparent), or whether they rather tend to revert to either the paternal or the maternal type. I have shown in a previous paper that in regard to some head measurements the latter tendency is found in the mixture of American Indian and of White blood,2 and the preliminary investigation tended to show that in the intraracial marriages of Russian Jews the same tendency prevailed. It seemed, however, necessary to base this conclusion on more extensive material.