456 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



may indeed become a factor in tlie physical sense, especially wlien 

 re-enforced by language. It can not be denied that assimilation 

 in blood often depends upon identity of speech, or that political 

 frontiers sometimes coincide with a racial differentiation of popu- 

 lation. The canton of Schaffhausen lies north of the Rhine, a 

 deep inset into the grand duchy of Baden, yet its people, though 

 isolated from their Swiss countrymen across the river, are in- 

 tensely patriotic. In race as in political affairs they are distinctly 

 divided from their immediate German neighbors. Mentally hold- 

 ing to the Swiss people, they have unconsciously generated a 

 physical individuality akin to them as well. Thus it is possible 

 that a sense of nationality once aroused may become an active 

 factor through selection in the anthropological sense. Neverthe- 

 less, this phenomenon requires more time than most political his- 

 tory has at its disposition, so that in the main our proposition 

 remains true. Despite the political hatred of the French for the 

 German, no appreciable effect in a physical sense has yet resulted, 

 nor will it until the lapse of generations. 



Consideration of our linguistic map of the southwest of Europe 

 will serve to illustrate some of the potent political influences 

 which make for community of language without thereby indicat- 

 ing any influence of race. The Iberian Peninsula, now divided 

 between two nationalities, the Spanish and the Portuguese, is, as 

 we shall subsequently show, in the main homogeneous racially 

 more so, in fact, than any other equally large area of Europe. The 

 only exception is in the case of the Basques, whom we must con- 

 sider by themselves. This physically uniform population, exclu- 

 sive of the Basque, makes use to-day of three distinct languages, 

 all Romance or Latin in their origin, to be sure, but so far differ- 

 entiated from one another as to be mutually unintelligible. It is 

 said, for example, that the Castilian peasant can more readily 

 understand Italian than the dialect of his neighbor and compa- 

 triot, the Catalan. The gap between the Portuguese and the Cas- 

 tilian or true Spanish is less deep and wide, perhaps ; but the two 

 are still very distinct and radically different from the language 

 spoken in the eastern provinces of Spain. The Catalan speech is, 

 as the related tints upon our map imply, only a sub-variety of 

 the Provencal or southern French language. The people of the 

 Balearic Islands speaking this Catalan tongue differ from the 

 French in language but little more than do the Corsicans.* 



* For the Basque language boundary, vide Revue d' Anthropologic, Paris, series 1, iv, 

 p. 1. The Catalan boundary in France is mapped in Revue mensuelle de rEcole d'Au- 

 thropologiej Paris, vol. i, p. 143 ; Encyelopajdia Britannica, vol. xxii, p. 850, gives details 

 for Spain. The dialect boundary of the Langue d'Oc is traced geographically in Revue 

 mensuelle, etc., i, p. 219 ; vide also Bulletin de la Sociote d' Anthropologic, 18V9, p. 68. 



