IteBtTABT 26, 1909] 



SCIENCE 



327 



left by their agricultural population were 

 settled by new emigrants— the old Puritan 

 ground being entered by Roman Catholic 

 Irish and Italians and French Canadians 

 and Russian Jews— so also in Germany the 

 areas were resettled which had been left by 

 their emigrating inhabitants, especially the 

 eastern part. But the emigration had been 

 more complete than in eastern New Eng- 

 land, and the new settlers found a vacant 

 country in which they could introduce their 

 own language. A reaction, however, set 

 in, and since the times of Charlemagne the 

 Germans have been taking back their old 

 land from a population whose descendants 

 are to-day, in North America, classed as 

 undesirable immigrants. 



While this was beginning, the northern 

 neighbors of the Germans, the Scandina- 

 vians, were seized with a similar longing 

 to migrate that the Germans had experi- 

 enced several hundred years ago, but while 

 the Germans migrated on the land, the 

 Scandinavians went on the sea. Scandi- 

 navian tribes crossed the Baltic Sea and 

 crossed into the forests of northern Russia, 

 where they founded the Russian empire, 

 the name of which points back to the times 

 when the Scandinavian conquerors used 

 their slavish subjects as "rowsmen." 

 Scandinavian pirates devastated the coast 

 of northern Germany, of England, Scot- 

 land and France, where they settled, form- 

 ing Normandy. They sailed into the Medi- 

 terranean Sea and at Constantinople met 

 with countrymen going through Russia. 

 Others went into the northern seas, discov- 

 ering the Paer Oer, Iceland and Greenland. 

 They even came over to North America, 

 but this discovery was accompanied by a 

 large number of men prepared to settle, 

 and it remained unknown to the greater 

 part of Europe. Even Greenland was to- 

 tally forgotten, and its few Scandinavian 

 inhabitants expired when they came into 

 contact with the Eskimo population. Thus 



the outburst of Scandinavian peoples, like 

 the older outbursts of German peoples, re- 

 sulted in but a slight expansion of Scan- 

 dinavian ground. The Norman settlers 

 along the Mediterranean and the shores of 

 the Channel became intermixed with their 

 neighbors, and when the Normans con- 

 quered England they brought with them 

 French language and French customs. 



In Germany, after the time of martial 

 expansion of the people was over, more 

 settled conditions ensued, and the vast 

 forest-clad mountain regions which had 

 heretofore been only visited by hunters 

 were now cleared and a kind of interior 

 colonization took place in the central part 

 of the empire. The terminations "rente" 

 and "schwende" of names of German vil- 

 lages indicate that the clearing of their 

 forests was either by felling or burning the 

 tree, and so famous became the Germans 

 as clearers of woodland that they were 

 called into the mountains of Bohemia, 

 Silesia and Hungary, where peaceful col- 

 onization took place. German colonies, fol- 

 lowing the extension of German sea trafSe, 

 were founded along the shores of the Baltic 

 Sea and even on the west coast of Norway, 

 where the city of Bergen is a German col- 

 ony; even centuries after, when the Rus- 

 sian empire had been extended from the 

 Baltic to the Black Sea and to the Pacific, 

 Germans were invited to settle in order to 

 cultivate the country. These German col- 

 onies, which spread over all Russia, are 

 found even in the steppe countries east of 

 the Volga and of the Crimea. 



Those waves of Asiatic steppe rough- 

 riders which now and then spread out over 

 the low groimd of eastern Europe, were 

 always broken when they reached German 

 ground. Here the Hungarians were de- 

 feated. The Mongolian wave which had 

 terminated the early Russian empire met 

 with the same fate when it came to eastern 

 Germany, as did the wave of Turks which 



