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nydus/Applied EugenicsPublic
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CHAPTER XIII

establishing norms or standards for anthropological comparison, the main object of Dr. Hrdlička's study was to determine whether the descendants of the early American settlers, living in a new environment and more or less constantly intermarrying, were being amalgamated into a distinct sub-type of the white race. It has been found that such amalgamation has not taken place to any important degree. The persistence in heredity of certain features, which run down even through six or eight generations, is one of the remarkable results brought out by the study.

If the process could continue for a few hundred years more, Dr. Hrdlička thinks, it might reach a point where one could speak of the members of old American families as of a distinct stock. But so far this point has not been reached; the Americans are almost as diverse and variable, it appears, as were their first ancestors in this country.

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