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SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXIX. No. 739 



along the shores of the sea between North 

 and South America. 



The Roman empire was a true Mediter- 

 ranean state, but it pushed forward its 

 frontiers as well to the deserts of the Orient 

 as to the woodlands in the north. "Wood- 

 lands only rarely favor the evolution of a 

 primitive civilization. Agriculture needs 

 here more than irrigation ; the forests must 

 be cleared. This is a very hard work 

 which goes on very slowly, and it must be 

 followed by a continual struggle against 

 the constantly new-growing forests. Here 

 the family work has the greatest success 

 and political organization only will very 

 likely be formed. Indeed, the Romans 

 regarded the wood-folk in the north as bar- 

 barians, though these had a civilization of 

 their own which was of not inconsiderable 

 height. They had already submitted ex- 

 tensive ground to agriculture ; they already 

 manufactured iron, and they were settled 

 in villages and towns. But there can be 

 no doubt that the Romans brought them 

 more of the high civilization of the Orient 

 than had reached them through the com- 

 merce of the Phoenicians and Greeks. By 

 this, the Romans aided their neighbors in 

 the north until finally the latter left their 

 forests and conquered the south. 



This political movement had as a start- 

 ing-point central Europe. This is the 

 center around which the other parts of 

 Europe are arranged in such a way that 

 they can be directly reached, and while 

 most of these other parts are more or less 

 separated from one another, lying isolated 

 like Great Britain, or stretching into neigh- 

 boring seas like Scandinavia, or Spain, or 

 Italy, or the Balkan peninsula, they all are 

 either connected with or are near to central 

 Europe. Therefore, the relations between 

 those members of Europe and the center 

 were always active. Open to all sides, this 

 center has suffered by its neighbors when 

 its population was feeble and without 



force; or, on the other hand, when its in- 

 habitants are strong, they influenced aU 

 Europe. More than once central Europe 

 acted as the heart of the European body 

 and drove fresh blood into the members. 



When the forest-folk of central Europe 

 had gained from the Romans knowledge of 

 the favored regions of the Mediterranean 

 basin rich in all kinds of fruit, they began 

 to move towards the south; they laid in 

 ruins the Roman empire and founded new 

 kingdoms, but they could keep their na- 

 tionality only where they appeared in great 

 numbers. They were absorbed by the 

 peoples of southern Europe, and the Ger- 

 man ground extended only in the south- 

 west, along the Rhine, and in England. 

 England still bears the name of the Ger- 

 man tribe — the Angles — who, together with 

 the Saxons, conquered that extreme part 

 of the old Roman empire, and in the whole 

 of Europe we find witnesses of former Ger- 

 man immigration. In the south of Spain, 

 the name of Andalusia reminds us of the 

 German tribe of the Vandalians who 

 came from the Baltic Sea. In upper Italy, 

 Lombardy conserves the name of those 

 long-bearded Germans who settled there, 

 and in the regions north of Milan you see 

 more blond people with blue eyes than in 

 many parts of the German empire. Prance 

 received her name from the German 

 Franks who extended their empire there. 



The emigration of the German wood-folk 

 seems not to have been caused by the pres- 

 sure of other peoples. There seems to have 

 been awakened a yearning among the Ger- 

 man tribes to occupy better countries than 

 their own. It seems to have been a similar 

 longing to migrate and to settle new coun- 

 tries as that which prevailed in the eastern 

 states of North America for more than one 

 hundred years and which caused that enor- 

 mous extent of the Anglo-Saxon race over 

 the whole continent of North America. As 

 in New England, the woodlands which were 



