THE RACIAL GEOGRAPHY OF EUROPE. 



33 



tinct, save as it clings for dear life to the outskirts of the British 

 Isles. Here again, we find an ethnic struggle in process, which 

 has been going on for centuries, unsuspected by the statesmen 

 who were building a nation upon these shifting sands of race. 

 This struggle depends, as elsewhere in France, upon the topog- 

 raphy of the country. The case is so peculiar, however, that it 

 will repay us to consider it a little more in detail. 



The anthropological fate of Brittany, this last of our three 

 main areas of isolation, depends largely upon its peninsular form. 

 Its frontage of seacoast and its many harbors have rendered it 

 peculiarly liable to invasion from the sea ; while at the same time 

 it has been protected on the east by its remoteness from the eco- 

 nomic and political centers and highways of France. This coin- 

 cidence and not a greater purity of blood has preserved its Celtic 

 speech. Since the foreigners have necessarily touched at separate 

 points along its coast, concerted attack upon the language has 

 been rendered impossible. This fact of invasion from the sea has 

 divided its people not into the men of the mountain distinct from 

 those of the plain a differentiation of population, by the way, as 

 old as the reforms of Solon and Cleisthenes. The contrast has 

 arisen between the seacoast and the interior. The people of the 

 inland villages contain a goodly proportion of the Alpine stock, 

 although, as our maps show, it is more attenuated than in either 

 Savoy or Auvergne. To the eye this Alpine lineage appears in a 



EASTERN LIMIT 

 CELTIC "SPEECH / 

 (APPROXIMATE) 



CEPHALIC INDLX 



NORMANDY AND BRITTANY 



roundness of the face, a concave nose in profile, and broad nos- 

 trils. Along the coast intermixture has narrowed the heads, 

 lightened the complexion, and, perhaps more than all, increased 

 the stature. For an example of these contrasts our maps will 



