434 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



France. It is befitting to do so ; for Caesar informs us that the 

 Belgae in his time controlled the whole region. Roman Gaul, 

 properly speaking, extended only as far north as the Seine and 

 the Marne. In Csesar's time the frontier of Belgium the land 

 of the Belgaa lay near Paris. Has its recession to the north pro- 

 duced any appreciable change upon the people ? Certainly not in 

 any physical sense, as we shall attempt to point out. 



The northern third of France and half of Belgium are to-day 

 more Teutonic than the south of Germany. This is clearly 

 attested by the maps which show the distribution of each of the 

 physical characteristics of race. It should not occasion surprise 

 when we remember the incessant downpour of Teutonic tribes 

 during the whole historic period. It was a constant procession, of 

 Goths from all points of the compass of Franks, Burgundians, 

 and others. France was entirely overrun by the Franks, with 

 the exception of Brittany, by the middle of the sixth century. All 

 through the middle ages this part of Europe was not only ethnic- 

 ally Teutonic : it was German in language and customs as well. 

 The very name of the country is Teutonic. It has the same origin 

 as Franconia in southern Germany. In 812 the Council of Tours, 

 away down south, ordained that every bishop should preach both 

 in the Romance and the Teutonic languages. The Franks pre- 

 served their German speech four hundred years after the con- 

 quest.* Charlemagne was a German ; his courtiers were all Ger- 

 mans; he lived and governed from outside the limits of modern 

 France. The Abb Sieyes uttered an ethnological truism when, 

 in the course of the French Revolution, he cried out against the 

 French aristocracy: "Let us send them back to their German 

 marshes whence they came ! " Even to-day the current of migra- 

 tion between France and Germany sets strongly to the south, as 

 it has ever done in virtue of economic laws deeper than national 

 prejudice or hostile legislation.! 



The movement of population racially has been strongly influ- 

 enced by the geography of the country. Were it not for the 

 peculiar conformation of this part of Europe, there would be no 

 geographical excuse for the existence of Belgium as a separate 



* For many details, aiid a map of German place names in northern France, consult that 

 remarkable book of Canon Isaac Taylor, Names and Places, pp. 94 seq. It is a work 

 which should be made familiar to every would-be teacher of history and geography. 



f The standard authorities upon Belgium are E. Houze, Ethnogenie de la Belgique, 

 Bruxelles, 1882; and L. Vanderkindere, L'Ethnologie de la Belgique, Bruxelles, 1879. K. 

 Bockh, in Zeits. f. allg. Erdkunde, Berlin, iii, 1854, p. 80, has mapped the linguistic bound- 

 ary. Cf. also H. Vandenhoven, La Langue Flamande, Bruxelles, 1844. The last investi- 

 gation is by K. Bramer, in Kirchhoff's Forschungen zur deut. Land- u. Volkskunde, ii, 

 1887, Heft 2. The boundary of the Flemish language on the south in France is mapped 

 by R. Andree in Globus, xxxvi, 1879, pp. 6-10 and 25-29. Vide also G. Lagneau, Eth- 

 nogenie des Populations du Nord de la France, Rev. d'Anth., 1874, pp. 577-612. 



