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SCIENCE 



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



SO easily rushed over Hungary. From the 

 walls of Vienna imperial German armies 

 drove back the Turks into those frontiers 

 of Turkey, which lasted until the end of 

 the nineteenth century, and German set- 

 tlers founded a new culture in Hungary. 



Thus the influence of early German con- 

 quest and later German peaceful coloniza- 

 tion is felt nearly over the whole of Europe. 

 The earlier conquest formed the nobility of 

 France and Italy, where many noble fam- 

 ilies still conserve more or less corrupt 

 German family names, and German names 

 were long in use for noblemen in medieval 

 times. German colonists developed the 

 agricultural resources of the southeast and 

 east of Europe and German merchants ex- 

 tended their commerce on the coast of the 

 whole Atlantic Europe. 



This kind of peaceful German extension 

 is also favored by the central position of 

 Germany in Europe, but it is very much 

 based on the fact that Germany herself is 

 not a country too much favored by nature, 

 and it is her very poor soil which has edu- 

 cated her population to strong and intelli- 

 gent labor. This population, however, in- 

 creased to greater numbers than the ground 

 could support, and this is the real cause of 

 the expansion of German population by 

 immigration, the influence of which has 

 been so markedly felt by all Europe. It 

 is the natural expansion of a strong, work- 

 ing forest-folk and one which resembles 

 very much the expansion of the people on 

 the east coast of North America over a 

 whole continent. 



The virgin forests of peninsular North 

 America were far out of the reach of orig- 

 inal American civilization, which co^^ld 

 neither spread out over the shores of the 

 American Mediterranean nor cross the arid 

 regions and deserts north of Mexico. Their 

 Indian inhabitants remained in the state of 

 hunters and never cleared the woodland. 

 The natural riches of that region were de- 



veloped only when it was settled by Euro- 

 peans, who had learned in Europe to over- 

 come the resistance of forests to agricul- 

 ture. And soon after its colonization, its 

 population experienced that strong wish to 

 expand which is so characteristic of early 

 German migrations. The descendants of 

 that population on the Atlantic slope of 

 North America, who had cleared the virgin 

 forests, crossed the Appalachian chain, 

 cultivated the prairie grounds of the Mis- 

 sissippi basin, and adapted themselves to 

 the arid climate of the west and the Italian 

 climate of California. Thus the Atlantic 

 side of North America plays in its coloniza- 

 tion a role similar to that of Germany in 

 the history of Europe. 



The expansion of eastern North Amer- 

 icans, however, met with no strong resist- 

 ance from the other inhabitants of North 

 America. The Indians defended their 

 ground in insufficient numbers and with 

 insufficient arms, and they died out when 

 they came into contact with higher civiliza- 

 tion. In Europe, on the other hand, Ger- 

 man emigrants spread amid peoples of 

 larger numbers, and became, therefore, 

 partly absorbed. The difl'erence in expan- 

 sion between the Atlantic North American 

 and the German populations is neither 

 caused by a greater strength of the North 

 American expansion, nor by a lower educa- 

 tion of German settlers; it is due to the 

 fact that the North American expansion 

 extended over a continent inhabited only 

 by nomadic tribes of small numbers and of 

 low civilization, while the German expan- 

 sion extended over vast areas occupied by 

 peoples with a culture and an organization 

 of their own. This again is due to the fact 

 that higher civilization spread out over all 

 Europe, while the native civilization of 

 North America remained restricted to the 

 plateaus west of the Gulf of Mexico. 



There is a remarkable resemblance be- 

 tween the expansion of German population 



