THE RACIAL GEOGRAPHY OF EUROPE. 55 



cern to determine this point. Happily for us, such questions have 

 no terrors to-day. We have already seen how securely nationality 

 may rest upon heterogeneity of physical descent. Be that as it 

 may, it seems to be certain that the peasantry of Prussia is far from 

 being purely Teutonic in physical type. We should expect this to 

 be the case, of course, in those eastern provinces, Posen and Silesia, 

 which still retain their Slavic languages as evidence of former 

 political independence. These ought normally to be allied to 

 Russia and eastern Europe, as we have already observed. But as 

 to Brandenburg the provinces about Berlin. How about them? 

 Do they also betray signs of an intermixture with the broad-headed 

 Alpine race, of which the Slavs are part? It seems to be so indeed. 

 Germany on the east shades off imperceptibly into Lithuania and the 

 Polish provinces of Russia. Little by little the heads broaden to an 

 index rising eighty-three. Whether this is a product of historic 

 expansion we may discuss later. For the present we may accept it 

 as a fact.* 



The race question in Germany came to the front some years ago 

 under rather peculiar circumstances. Shortly after the close of the 

 Franco-Prussian War, while the sting of defeat was still smarting 

 in France, de Quatrefages, an eminent anthropologist at Paris, 

 promulgated the theory, afterward published in a brochure entitled 

 The Prussian Race, that the dominant people in Germany were not 

 Teutons at all, but were directly descended from the Finns. Being 

 nothing but Finns, they were to be classed with the Lapps and other 

 peoples of western Russia. As a consequence they were alien to 

 Germany barbarians, ruling by the sword alone. The political 

 effect of such a theory, emanating from so high an authority, may 

 well be imagined. Coming at a time of profound national humili- 

 ation in France, when bitter jealousies were still rife among the 

 Germans, the book created a profound sensation. It must be con- 

 fessed that the tone of the work was by no means judicial, although 

 it was respectably scientific in its outward form. Thus the chapter 

 in it describing the bombardment of the Musee d'Histoire Naturelle, 

 of which de Quatrefages was the director, intended to prove the 

 anti-civilized proclivities of the hated conquerors, could not in the 

 nature of things be entirely dispassionate. The Parisian press, as 

 may be imagined, was not slow to take advantage of such an oppor- 

 tunity. Articles of de Quatrefages in the Revue de Deux Mondes 

 were everywhere quoted, with such additions as seemed fitting under 



* Authorities are cited in our article in L' Anthropologic, Paris, vii, 1896, p. 619 seq. 

 Kollmann, in Archiv f. Anth., xiii, 1881, p. 117 seq., gives many references. See also Lith- 

 uania, Esthonia, etc., in our bibliography above mentioned. Virchow admits it himself, 

 Alte Berliner Schadel, in Verh. Berl. Ges. f. Anth., 1880, p. 234. 



