LINGUISTIC AEEAS IN EUROPE DOMINIAN. 



417 



Beyond Alsace, French and German meet along a line which ex- 

 tends across western Swiss territory to the Italian frontier.^ Its 

 present course has been maintained since the fifteenth century.^ Be- 

 ginning at Lucelle, 

 the line crosses the 

 Jura Mountains 

 west of Solothurn. 

 Lake Neuchatel is 

 surrounded on all 

 sides except the 

 northeast by 

 French - speaking 

 communities. The 

 western and south- 

 ern shores of Lake 

 Morat are likewise 

 French. Fribourg, 

 a city in which the 

 struggle for linguis- 

 tic supremacy is 

 strenuous, lies at 

 the edge of French- 

 speaking territory. 

 The line becomes 

 better defined in 

 the upper Valley of 

 the Rhone, where 

 it coincides with 

 the divide between 

 the Val d'Anni- 

 viers and the Turt- 

 mann Thai. The 

 construction of the 

 Simplon Tunnel 

 appears to have 

 been the cause of 

 an extension of 

 French influence in 

 this region and re- 

 cession of German from the Morge Valley to the east of Sierre lies 

 within the memory of living natives. 



1 p. Langhans, Die W^estschweiz mit deutscher Ortsbenennung 1 : 500,000. Deut. Erde, 

 5, 1906, PI. 5. 



2L. Gallois, Les limites linguistlques du frangais, Ann. de G^ogr., vol. 9, 1900, p. 218. 



18618°— SM 1915 27 



Fig. 1.— The boundary between French and German in Switzerland. 



Scale, 1:1,435,000. 



