NELSON] GUSTAF RETZIUS 175
received due share of attention. For himself Retzius wrote a series of biographies, travel sketches and popular scientific articles; but he tried his hand also at political leaders, literary notices and when necessary delivered small talks and poems. For a time it looked as if he would let slip his scientific interests.
To a man of such gifts and such industry the highest honors and recognitions came as a matter of course from every quarter of the globe. Retzius was perhaps less well known in America than was his due ; yet he had traveled here and was an honorary member, e.g., of the Washington and Philadelphia Academies of Science. His last and most prized reward came to him from the Swedish Academy of Science, on the occasion of his seventieth birthday, in the shape of a memorial volume consisting chiefly of anatomical studies.
Although the writer was not personally acquainted with the deceased, he may venture to pay his own respects by referring once more to Retzius as an anthropologist. His interest in the subject was unquestionably instilled by the father, who is the recognized founder of modern craniometry. The elder Retzius died in his prime, in 1860, leaving a number of scattered brief papers. These papers, four years later, were gathered together and published with a foreword by the son as the first evidence of his interest in the subject. He was only twenty-two years of age at the time. In looking over the volume, it appears that the father as early as 1842 had made a beginning in classifying the human races on the cephalic-gnatic index basis and that in 1860 he presented before the Swedish Academy a map of the world showing the cephalic index distribution a map which in all general respects is identical with that published by Ripley in 1899. On the basis of these investigations Anders Retzius became the first to recognize the mixed character of Europe's population and thus to challenge the validity of the Aryan hypothesis.
The most noteworthy publications by Gustaf Retzius himself commence with " Finnish Craniology" (Swedish, 1878), a title which covers in fact a considerable sketch of Finnish culture in all of its phases past and present, besides a brief chapter on the sup-
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