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The question must be asked in how far selective agencies may determine the movements of the population, including immigration and emigration, the settlement of the western parts of the United States by the inhabitants of the eastern states, and the migration from country to city. Besides migration, the selective influences of mating, of mortality, and of fertility have to be taken into account. Of late years much stress has been laid upon the effect of selection upon the constitution of a population.

The effect of selection as determined by bodily form can be investigated to advantage only in a homogeneous population. When every family may be considered as representative of the whole population, and when all strata of society present the same physical characteristics, selective forces that are based on social stratification will not influence the selective results, because all social strata will be alike. If it should be found that groups representing different bodily forms have different tendencies to migrate, or different rates of mortality or fertility, we might have an expression of the direct dependence of selection upon bodily form.

As a matter of fact, however, homogeneous populations do not exist anywhere in the world. A greater or less amount of heterogeneity has always been observed, and heterogeneity in our modern civilization, at least, is always connected with social stratification. In a heterogeneous population like that of the United States the difficulties in the way of determining a direct relation between selective influences and bodily form are almost insurmountable. If, for instance, descendants of a certain nationality are attracted to a particular area, as the Scandinavians to the northwest, the Hungarians to the mines of Pennsylvania, the Mexicans to the southern borderland of the United States, or the French Canadians to the New England states and northern New York, we must remember that each one of these social groups represents a certain physical type and that there will be, therefore, an apparent relation between selection and physical type which in reality is based on social factors.

Similar observations may be made with regard to selective mating. Since mating depends upon social contact, marriages will occur among the groups that associate together. Wherever nationalities cluster together, where denominational or racial considerations act as endogamic restrictions, there will be selective mating of similar types due to social heterogeneity. Besides this there may be a certain amount of selection that unites tall with tall or expresses the sexual attractiveness of other bodily features.

Social heterogeneity exerts an influence also upon the mortality and the fertility of different groups. The more recent immigrants are on the whole less well-to-do than the earlier immigrants and their descendants. We know that there is a relation between fertility and economic well-being and we find, therefore, that the number of children of the more recent immigrants is greater than that of the descendants of earlier immigrants, so that, setting aside the question of mortality, there would be a shifting in the distribution of the population in favor of later immigrants. Since the earlier immigrants represent the northwestern European type and the later immigrants the south and east European types, there will appear in this case also a selection according to bodily form, which is due not to the direct relation between physical characteristics and fertility, but rather to the fact that the one economic group is composed of one type, and the other economic group of another type. In many cases the relation between descent and social stratification is so complex that it easily escapes our notice, and for this reason we may observe phenomena of selection apparently related to bodily form but actually due to obscure social causes that are discovered with great difficulty only.

On the other hand it cannot be denied that in some cases at least there must be a direct relation between bodily form and physiological function on the one side and selective processes on the other. It is, for instance, quite obvious that in the settlement of the new western countries a certain bodily and mental vigor was necessary to enable a person to undertake the venture. It has often been pointed out, although it has never been proven empirically, that in this way there must have been a selection from the inhabitants of the New England villages who migrated westward and that the emigrants represented a physically superior type. Even though this conclusion is not based on observation it seems highly probable. To the same group of phenomena would belong the supposed greater susceptibility to certain forms of disease of slightly pigmented individuals, as compared with the greater power of resistance of brunet individuals. I am not by any means convinced that incontrovertible proof of this assumption has been given; but if it were true that the constitution of the blond is weakened by exposure to intense sunlight, there might be a selective influence of this kind when a people move from the cloudy temperate zones to the brilliant sunlight of more southern and more arid climes.

In considering the selective influences of environment it should be borne in mind that the human body is so constituted that all its organs can operate adequately under widely varying circumstances. Our lungs are able to supply the needs of our body under the air pressure that prevails at the level of the sea, and they operate adequately at an elevation of 20,000 feet where the air is highly rarefied. The heart can adjust itself to the variation in demands made upon it, either in sedentary life at the level of the sea, or in active life in high altitudes. Our digestive organs may adapt themselves to a purely vegetable diet or again to a purely meat diet. Our central nervous system is also capable of adjusting itself to the most varied conditions of life. As long, therefore, as the conditions of environment do not exceed very elastic limits, it is not probable that selective influences would become operative to any very great extent, at least not in so far as they are determined solely by the form and functioning of the organs of the body.