62 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



map is adapted from his.* The modern limits of the Frankish 

 dialect also coincide with it in great part. Here, just outside the 

 Roman walls, the Burgundians, Helvetians, and Franks undoubtedly 

 were massed for a long time. 



The Teutons, in invading the territory of the indigenous Alpine 

 population, only succeeded in displacing the aborigines in part. They 

 followed up the rivers, took possession of the open plains; but every- 

 where else left the natives in relative purity. This accounts in 

 some measure for the great differentiation between people of moun- 

 tain and plain all over this part of Europe, to which we have con- 

 stantly adverted. It endows the whole event with the character 

 of a great social movement, rather than of a sudden military occupa- 

 tion. We can not too fully guard against the hasty assumption 

 that this Teutonic expansion was entirely a forcible dispossession 

 of one people by another. It may have been so on the surface; but 

 its results are too universal to be ascribed to that alone. A revolu- 

 tion of opinion is taking place among anthropologists and historians 

 as well to-day, similar to that which was stimulated in geology many 

 years ago by Sir Charles Lyell. That is to say, conceptions of ter- 

 rific cataclysms, human or geological, producing great results sud- 

 denly, are being supplanted by theories of slow-moving causes, 

 working about us to-day, which, acting constantly, almost imper- 

 ceptibly, in the aggregate are no less mighty in their results. In 

 pursuance of this change of view, students look to-day to present 

 social slow- working movements for the main explanation of the 

 great racial migrations in the past. 



We can not resist the conclusion that the Teutonic expansion 

 must be ascribed in part to the relative infertility of the north of 

 Europe; possibly to differences in birth rates, and the like. Popu- 

 lation outran the means of support. For a long while its overflow 

 was dammed back by the Roman Empire, until it finally broke over 

 all barriers. It is conceivable that some such contrast as is now 

 apparent between the French and Germans may have been opera- 

 tive then. The Germans are to-day constantly immigrating into 

 northern France — all over the world, in fact — and why? Simply 

 because population is increasing very rapidly; while in France it 

 is practically at a standstill. Another effective force in inducing 

 emigration from the north may have been differences in social 

 customs indirectly due to environmental influences. Thus Baring- 

 Gould has called attention to the contrasts in customs of inheritance 

 which once obtained between the peasants of northern and southern 



* The whole extent of the Roman wall in Germany is shown upon our subsequent map 

 of village types, by means of a similar heavy black line. Its relation there to the Germanic 

 village type can not fail to be observed. 



