298 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



birth rate long resisted the depressing influences of civilization. 

 For years it has been converted into a veritable foundling asylum 

 for the city of Paris. Its mothers have cared for innumerable 

 waifs besides their own offspring. This isolated people is strongly 

 Alpine, as our portraits show, the boy on the right being a pecul- 

 iarly good type ; the other one has a strain of Teutonic narrow- 

 headedness from all appearances. Beyond a doubt here is another 

 little spot in which the Alpine race has been able to persist by 

 reason of isolation alone.* 



The law which holds true for most of France, then, is that the 

 Alpine stock is confined to the areas of isolation and economic 

 unattractiveness. A patent exception to this appears in Bur- 

 gundy the fertile plains of the Saone, lying south of Dijon. A 

 strongly marked area of broad-headedness cuts straight across 

 the Saone Valley at this point. A most desirable country is 

 strongly held by a broad-headed stock, although it is very close 

 to the Teutonic immigration route up along the Rhine. Here 

 we have a striking example of the reversion of a people to its 

 early type after a complete military conquest. It serves as an 

 apt illustration of the impotency of a conquering tribe to exter- 

 minate the original population. The Burgundians, as we know, 

 belonged to a blond and tall race of Teutonic lineage, who came 

 to the country from the north in considerable numbers in the fifth 

 century. The Romans welcomed them in Gaul, forcing the peo- 

 ple to grant them one half of their houses, two thirds of their 

 cultivated land, and a third of their slaves. For about a thou- 

 sand years this district of Burgundy took its rule more or less 

 from the Teutonic invaders : and yet to-day it has completely 

 reverted to its primitive type of population. It is even more 

 French than the Auvergnats themselves. The common people 

 have virtually exterminated every trace of their conquerors. 

 Even their great height (shown on our stature map), for which the 

 Burgundians have long been celebrated, is probably more to be 

 ascribed to the material prosperity of the district than to a Teu- 

 tonic strain. One factor contributing to the result we observe 

 is that the fertile country of the Saone Valley is open to constant 

 immigration from Switzerland and the surrounding mountains. 

 The Rhine has drawn off the Teutons in another direction, and 

 political hatreds have discouraged immigration from the north- 

 east. The result has been that the Alpine type has been strongly 



* It should be noted that this relation does not appear upon our map of head form, 

 because this represents merely the averages for whole departments. The Morvan happens 

 to lie just at the meeting point of three of these, so that its influence upon the map is 

 entirely scattered. Most interesting details are given in Memoires de la Societe d'Anthro- 

 pologie, Series 3, I, 1894, fasc. 2. 



