han those of almost any other race.

The Quichuas are fond of shaking hands. When a visiting Indian
joins a group he nearly always goes through the gentle ceremony with
each person in turn. I do not know whether this was introduced by
the Spaniards or comes down from prehistoric times. In any event,
this handshaking in no way resembles the hearty clasp familiar to
undergraduates at the beginning of the college year. As a matter of
fact the Quichua handshake is extremely fishy and lacks cordiality. In
testing the hand grip of the Quichuas by a dynamometer our surgeons
found that the muscles of the forearm were poorly developed in the
Quichua and the maximum grip was weak in both sexes, the average
for the man being only about half of that found among American white
adults of sedentary habits.

Dr. Ales Hrdlicka believes that the aboriginal races of North
and South America were of the same stock. The wide differences
in physiognomy observable among the different tribes in North and
South America are perhaps due to their environmental history during
the past 10,000 or 20,000 years. Mr. Frank Chapman, of the American
Museum of Natural History, has pointed out the interesting biological
fact that animals and birds found at sea level in the cold regions of
Tierra del Fuego, while not found at sea level in Peru, do exist at
very high altitudes, where the climate is similar to that with which
they are acquainted. Similarly, it is interesting to learn that the
inhabitants of the cold, lofty regions of southern Peru, living in
towns and villages at altitudes of from 9000 to 14,000 feet above the
sea, have physical peculiarities closely resembling those living at
sea level in Tierra del Fuego, Alaska, and Labrador. Dr. Ferris says
the Labrador Eskimo and the Quichua constitute the two "best-known
short-stature races on the American continent."

So far as we could learn by questions and observation, about one
quarter of the Quichuas are childless. In families which have children
the average number is three or four. Large families are not common,
although we generally learned that the living children in a family
usually represented less than half of those which had been born. Infant
mortality is very great. The proper feeding of children is not
understood and it is a marvel how any of them manage to grow up at all.

Coughs and bronchial trouble are very common among the Indians. In
fact, the most common afflictions of the tablel