THE RACIAL GEOGRAPHY OF EUROPE. 299 



re-enforced from nearly every side, while Teutonic elements have 

 been gradually eliminated. 



Another and perhaps even more potent explanation for this 

 localization of the Alpine type in Burgundy also lies at hand. 

 This fertile plain is the last rallying point of a people repressed 

 both from the north and the south. The general rule, as Canon 

 Taylor puts it, is that the " hills contain the ethnological sweep- 

 ings of the plains." This holds good only until such time as the 

 hills themselves become saturated with population, if I may mix 

 figures of speech. Applying this principle to the present case, it 

 appears as if the original Alpine stock in Burgundy had been 

 encroached upon from two sides. The Teutons have overflowed 

 from the north ; the Mediterranean stock has pressed up the 

 Rhone Valley. Before these two the broad-headed Alpine type 

 has, as usual, yielded step by step, until at last it has become 

 resistant, not by reason of any geographical isolation or advan- 

 tage, but merely because of its density and mass. It has been 

 squeezed into a compact body of broad-headedness, and has per- 

 sisted in that form to the present time. It has rested here, be- 

 cause no further refuge existed. It is dammed up in just the 

 same way that the restless American borderers have at last set- 

 tled in force in Kansas. Being in the main discouraged from fur- 

 ther westward movement, they have at last taken root. In this 

 way a primitive population may conceivably preserve its ethnic 

 purity, entirely apart from geographical areas of isolation as 

 such. 



What is the meaning of this remarkable differentiation of 

 population ? Why should the Alpine racial type be so hard 

 favored in respect of its habitat ? Is it because prosperity tends 

 to make the head narrow ; or, in other words, because the physical 

 environment exerts a direct influence upon the shape of the 

 cranium ? Were the people of France once completely homoge- 

 neous until differentiated by outward circumstances ? There is 

 absolutely no proof of it. Nevertheless, the coincidence remains 

 to be explained. It holds good in every part of Europe that we 

 have examined in Switzerland, the Tyrol, the Black Forest and 

 now here in great detail for all France. Two theories offer a pos- 

 sible and competent explanation for it all. One is geographical, 

 the other social. 



The first theory accounting for the sharp differences of popu- 

 lation between the favorable and unpropitious sections of Europe 

 is that the population in the uplands, in the nooks and corners, 

 represents an older race, which has been eroded by the modern im- 

 migration of a new people. In other words, the Alpine Celts once 

 occupied the land much more exclusively ; they were the primi- 

 tive possessors of the soil. From the north have come the Teu- 



