THE RACIAL GEOGRAPHY OF EUROPE. 483 



interesting observations upon this subject.* Where peasant houses 

 are closely aggregated or bunched in little villages, it is easy for each 

 family to maintain its separate dwelling, and yet for them all to 

 co-operate with one another in daily labor. On the other hand, the 

 peasant whose house is quite apart from those of his neighbors, placed 

 squarely, perhaps, in the center of his landed property, must of 

 necessity take his farm laborers into his own household. Thus, where 

 population is scattered evenly over a district, not in closely built 

 hamlets, but in widely separated houses, it generally happens that 

 there is considerable " home intermixture." Several families or 

 parts of families live under the same roof. Applying these consid- 

 erations to Brittany, it seems as if the very low percentage of 

 separate " home families " were a result of just such a broadcast 

 distribution of population. This absence of hamlets in turn is 

 a direct result of geology and climate. In Brittany the rainfall is 

 very heavy; water courses and springs abound on all sides. The 

 soil is at the same time thin, overlying an impervious granite forma- 

 tion. This makes it possible to build houses wherever convenient, 

 without anxiety concerning water supply. The exact opposite of 

 this occurs along the dry Mediterranean coast, where water is a 

 marketable commodity; and in those departments with a perme- 

 able chalk soil, where water disappears rapidly in subterranean 

 streams. In these latter cases houses inevitably collect about the 

 water courses and springs, and a high proportion of aggregated 

 population at once is manifested, with all that is thereby implied, 

 socially speaking. One of the first results would be that each family 

 in such a hamlet might occupy its own dwelling exclusively. 



Geographical factors have also operated in still another way in 

 Brittany to discourage the growth of closely built villages. This 

 region is so remote from any of the routes of military invasion from 

 the east that no necessity has ever arisen for compacting the popula- 

 tion in villages capable of ready defense. Levasseur gives this as an 

 important element in producing the contrasts in the proportion of 

 urban population between the different parts of France. In all of 

 our areas of isolation, the Alps, Auvergne, or Brittany, protected 

 by Nature against intrusion of enemies, the population can safely 

 scatter as it will. In any case, as we have said, the effect upon the 

 family, especially in all that concerns its separate existence under a 

 roof by itself, is very patent. 



If the geographical isolation peculiar to the areas occupied by 

 the Alpine race is thus potent in the way we have indicated, why 

 may it not appear in political as well as in social affairs? Conserva- 



* Bulletin de l'lnstitut Internationale de Statistique, iii, 1888, pp. 10 et seq. 



