There were, I remember, six of us in Conrad's bizarrely fashioned
study, with its queer relics from all over the world and its long rows
of books which ranged from the Mandrake Press edition of Boccaccio to
a _Missale Romanum_, bound in clasped oak boards and printed in
Venice, 1740. Clemants and Professor Kirowan had just engaged in a
somewhat testy anthropological argument: Clemants upholding the theory
of a separate, distinct Alpine race, while the professor maintained
that this so-called race was merely a deviation from an original Aryan
stock--possibly the result of an admixture between the southern or
Mediterranean races and the Nordic people.
"And how," asked Clemants, "do you account for their
brachycephalicism? The Mediterraneans were as long-headed as the
Aryans: would admixture between these dolichocephalic peoples produce
a broad-headed intermediate type?"
"Special conditions might bring about a change in an originally
long-headed race," snapped Kirowan. "Boaz has demonstrated, for
instance, that in the case of immigrants to America, skull formations
often change in one generation. And Flinders Petrie has shown that the
Lombards changed from a long-headed to a round-headed race in a few
centuries."
"But what caused these changes?"
"Much is yet unknown to science," answered Kirowan, "and we need
not be dogmatic. No one knows, as yet, why people of British and Irish
ancestry tend to grow unusually tall in the Darling district of
Australia--Cornstalks, as they are called--or why people of such
descent generally have thinner jaw-structures after a few generations
in New England. The universe is full of the unexplainable."
"And therefore the uninteresting, according to Machen," laughed
Taverel.
Conrad shook his head. "I must disagree. To me, the unknowable is
most tantalizingly fascinating."
"Which accounts, no doubt, for all the works on witchcraft and
demonology I see on your shelves," said Ketrick, with a wave of his
hand toward the rows of books.
