438 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 



strongly impregnated with eastern influences. Oddly enough, its 

 Christianity was derived from Byzantium instead of from Rome, 

 and were it not for a veritable renaissance of Latinism about 1860 

 its affinity with the Slavic world would have been far stronger in 

 the present century. 



13. THE AREA OF SLOVENE SPEECH. 



Of the two groups of southern Slavs subjected to Austro-Hun- 

 garian rule the Slovenes are numerically inferior.^ Settled on the 

 calcareous plateaus of Carniola, they cluster around Laibach and 

 attain the area of German speech, on the north, along the Drave 

 between Marburg and Klagenfurt.^ Eastward they march with 

 Hungarians and the Serbo-Croat group of southern Slavs. Their 

 southern linguistic boundary also coincides with the latter's. Around 

 Gottschee, however, a zone of German intervenes between Slovene 

 and Croatian dialects. Practically the entire eastern coast of the 

 Gulf of Triest lies in the area of Slovene speech. The group there- 

 by acquires the advantage of direct access to the sea, a fact of no 

 mean importance among the causes that contribute to its survival 

 to the present day in spite of being surrounded by Germans, Hun- 

 garians, Croats, and Italians. 



The Slovenes may be considered as laggards of the Slavic migra- 

 tions that followed Avar invasions. They would probably have 

 occupied the fertile plains of the Hungarian " Mesopotamia " had 

 they not been driven to their elevated home by the pressure of 

 Magyar and Turkish advances. Confinement in the upland pre- 

 vented fusion with the successive occupants of the eastern plains 

 which unfolded themselves below their mountain habitations. Ra- 

 cial distinctiveness characterized by language no less than by highly 

 developed attachment to tradition resulted from this state of 

 seclusion. 



14. THE AREA OF SERBIAN SPEECH. 



South of the Hungarian and Slovene linguistic zones the Austro- 

 Hungarian domain comprises a portion of the area of Serbian 

 speech. The language predominates from the Adriatic coast to 

 the Drave and Morava Rivers, as well as up to the section of the 

 Danube comprised between its points of confluence with these two 

 rivers.^ Serbian, in fact, extends slightly east of the Morava Valley 

 toward the Balkan slopes lying north of the Timok River, where 



11,252,940, Census of 1910. 



2 P. Samassa, Deutsche und Windische in Siidosterreich. Deut. Erde, 2, 1903, pp. 39-41, 

 which cf. with Niederle's delimitation in La Race Slave, pp. 139-140. 



3 Scattered Serbian settlements are also found between the Danube and Theiss Valleys as 

 far north as Maria-Theresiopel, and farther south at Zambor and Neusatz. Serbian is the 

 language of the entire district of the confluence of the Theiss and Danube. 



