628 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



broader-headed than even the neighboring peasantry of Be'arn, 

 and of course even more so than the long-headed Spanish popu- 

 lation across the Pyrenees. Turning back to our map on page 

 620, this will appear. Of course, the Basques are not more ex- 

 treme in this respect than the pure Alpine type ; we mean that 

 they rise in cephalic index above their immediate and adulterated 

 Alpine neighbors in Be'arn. This implies, of course, that they 

 are at the same time far broader-headed than the Spanish Basques 

 over the mountains. Thus we dispose at once of the explanation 

 offered both by Canon Taylor and De Quatrefages for the broad- 

 headedness of the French over the Spanish Basque. Taylor ac- 

 counted for this marked difference between the people of the two 

 opposite slopes of the Pyrenees on the supposition that in invad- 

 ing Be'arn from Spain the Basques intermarried with the broad- 

 headed Alpine stock there prevailing, and so deviated from their 

 parent type. This fact that we have mentioned, that in France 

 in their greatest purity the Basques are broader-headed than the 

 Bdarnais about them, proves beyond question that they are 

 brachycephalic by birth and not by intermixture with their 

 French neighbors. In Spain, on the other hand, the facial 

 Basque, if we may use the term, is slightly broader-headed than 

 his purely Spanish neighbor. Surrounded thus on all sides by 

 people with longer and narrower heads, we are forced to the con- 

 clusion that this people is by nature of a broad- headed race. An 

 important corollary is that the pure Basque is to-day found in 

 France and not in Spain, although they both speak the same lan- 

 guage. This exactly reverses Taylor's theory. It is the Spanish 

 Basque which is a cross-type in other words, narrower-headed 

 by four units than the French Basque because of intermixture 

 with the dolichocephalic Spaniards. Those who are found here 

 in Spain are probably stragglers ; they have merged their physi- 

 cal identity in that of their Spanish neighbors. Their political 

 autonomy on this south side of the mountains being less marked, 

 the power of ethnic resistance vanished quickly as well. 



Having disposed of the explanation of origin by intermixture, 

 the only hypothesis tenable is that these Basques are immigrants 

 that they are an intrusive people. Dr. Collignon's explanation 

 is so simple and agrees so well both with history and with anthro- 

 pological facts that we give it as nearly as possible in his own 

 words: During the Roman imperial rule a number of petty 

 Iberian tribes, by virtue of the same tenacity which enables their 

 descendants to enjoy political autonomy to this day, had pre- 

 served a similar independence south of the Pyrenees. Such were 

 the Vardules, Caristes, Autrigons, and the Vascons (Basque by 

 no means physically identical with the Gascons, although de- 

 rived from the same root word). These last occupied the upper 



