722 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



for supremacy viz., the broad-headed Alpine type of central 

 Europe and the true Mediterranean race in the south. 



A second reason, no less potent than the first, for the simplicity 

 of the ethnic problems presented in Italy is, of course, its pen- 

 insulated structure. All the outlying parts of Europe enjoy a 

 similar isolation. The population of Spain is even more unified 

 than the Italian. The former is probably the most homogeneous 

 in Europe, being almost entirely recruited from the Mediter- 

 ranean long-headed stock. So entirely similar, in fact, are all the 

 peoples which have invaded or, we had better say, populated the 

 Iberian Peninsula that we are unable to distinguish them an- 

 thropologically one from another. The Spaniards are akin to the 

 Berbers in Morocco, Algiers, and Tunis. The division line of 

 races falls at the French- Spanish frontier, as the maps in our last 

 article on the Basques showed in detail. " Beyond the Pyrenees 

 begins Africa " indeed. In Italy a corresponding transition from 

 Europe to Africa takes place, more gradually perhaps but no less 

 surely. It divides the Italian nation into two equal parts, of 

 entirely different racial descent. 



Geographically, Italy is constituted of two distinct parts. The 

 basin of the Po, between the Apennines and the Alps, is one of 

 the best defined areas of characterization in Europe. The only 

 place in all the periphery where its boundary is indistinct is on 

 the southeast, from Bologna to Pesaro. Here, for a short distance, 

 one of the little rivers which comes to the sea by Rimini, just 

 north of Pesaro, is the artificial boundary. It was the Rubicon of 

 the ancients, the frontier chosen by the Emperor Augustus be- 

 tween Italy proper and cisalpine Gaul. The second half of the 

 kingdom, no less definitely characterized, lies south of this line in 

 the peninsular portion. Here is where the true Italian language 

 in purity begins, in contradistinction to the Gallo- Italian in the 

 north, as Biondelli long ago proved. The boundaries of this half 

 are clearly marked on the north along the crest of the Apennines, 

 away across to the frontier of France ; for the modern provinces 

 of Liguria (see map) belong in flora and fauna, and, as we shall 

 show, in the character of their population, to the southern half 



Italy are : G. Nicolucci, Antropologia dell' Italia nel evo antico e nel moderno, in Atti del 

 R. Accademia delle Scienze di Napoli, series 2 a, ii, 1888, No. 9, pp. 1-112; G. Sergi, 

 Liguri e Celti nella valle del Po, in Archivio per 1' Antropologia, xiii, 1883, pp. 117-175, 

 gives a succinct account of the several strata of population ; R. Zampa, SulP etnografia 

 storica ed antropologica dell' Italia, Atti del Accademia pontificia dei Nuovi Lincei, Rome, 

 xliv, session May 17, 1891, pp. 173 seq.; and ibid., Crania Italica vetera, Memorie Accad. 

 pont. dei Nuovi Lincei, vii, 1891, pp. 1-73. Full references to the other works of these 

 authors, as well as of Calori, Lombroso, Helbig, Fligier, Virchow, et als., will be found in the 

 author's bibliography above mentioned. Broca, in reviewing Nicolucci's work in Revue 

 d'Anthropologie, 1874, gives a good summary of conclusions at that time, before the more 

 recent methods of research were adopted. 



