BRITISH ISLANDS 55 



The Alpine immigrants were rapidly absorbed, 

 leaving only rare traces in Cumberland, the Scottish 

 Borders and a few isolated districts through the 

 country where individuals rather above the average 

 in height, strong- jawed with heavy cheek-bones and 

 beetling brows, and short and broad heads, can still 

 be identified. 



The arrival of this outlier of the Alpine race was 

 the last prehistoric contribution to the British stock. 

 Since the beginning of historical times, there has 

 been a constant series of invasions of the Nordic or 

 Teutonic race from Europe, in most cases from the 

 north of Europe. All these were typically tall and 

 blond, long-headed and smooth-browed, and we know 

 them as Jutes and Angles, Saxons, Normans and 

 Scandinavians. They gradually saturated the whole 

 of the British Islands, completely swamping the 

 Alpine invasion, whose language and culture had 

 been imposed on the earlier and more enduring 

 Mediterranean stock, a stock that had itself been 

 driven westwards. The result of all these events is 

 the production of a markedly uniform type over the 

 British Isles, prevailingly Nordic, but towards the 

 west imperfectly blended with the equally long- 

 headed, but short and dark Mediterranean race, and 

 wdth here and there scanty remnants of the Alpine 

 race. 



France. Of the modern nations, France displays 

 the three European races in the least mixed form 

 and so conspicuously that the differences are plain 

 to any observant traveller who goes by road. Speak- 

 ing roughly, there are three areas stretching obliquely 

 across the country from north-east to south-west in 



