220 GERMANY. 



Switzerland. Its climate* and vegetation, too, are nearly identical, its more 

 northern latitude being compensated for by the greater elevation of Switzerland. 

 Wiirttemberg, quite as much as the region irrigated by the Lower Aar, is a land of 

 corn-fields and orchards, and even the vine flourishes on the banks of the Neckar, 

 all the way down from Tiibingen (1,040 feet). 



Inhabitants. 



The country around S:uttgart and Cannstadt, one of the most carefully culti- 

 vated of all Germany, was in a former age the favourite haunt of the mammoth 

 and shaggy rhinoceros, whose bones, mixed with those of horses, oxen, hyenas, 

 and tigers, have been discovered in the tufa. The caverns of the Swabian 

 Jura have yielded the bones of reindeer, together with stone implements, from 

 which it is concluded that the reindeer survived in the forests of Germany long 

 after it had become extinct in those of Gaul. 



This much is certain, that the country had its human inhabitants long before 

 the dawn of history. The kinship of the aboriginal inhabitants still forms a subject 

 of dispute between the learned. They were succeeded by Celts, and later on by 

 Germans. It is even supposed that the designation of the castle which has given 

 a name to the entire country is a corruption of the Celtic appellation of Virodunum, 

 the modern equivalent for which is Verdun. It was assumed formerly that the vast 

 majority of the Wiirttembergers are the direct descendants of the Suevi. An 

 examination of the old grave-hills has shown, however, that only about one-third 

 of the present inhabitants of the country exhibit the long skulls and fair com- 

 plexions which are associated with the Suevi. The majority, more especially in 

 the south and west, have black hair and round skulls : " one might almost take 

 them to be Figurians," says Dr. Fraas. The original type of the Swabian sur- 

 vives only on the plateau of the Kauhe Alp, where nearly all the children have 

 flaxen hair and blue eyes. This sterile mountain tract has exercised no attraction 

 upon invaders, and its inhabitants were thus able to perpetuate the type and 

 customs of their ancestors. Old German superstitions still survive there in the 

 guise of Christianity. Horse-shoes are nailed to every stable door as a protection 

 to the cattle, and Ascension Day is not allowed to pass without a fresh wreath of 

 amaranths being prepared to shield the house against lightning. The inhabitants, 

 like those of Savoy and Auvergne, migrate annually to the plain, where they gain a 

 living as pedlars and seed or flower merchants. Ehningcn, a village near Reutlingen, 

 is one of the head-quarters of these Swabian pedlars, and at Christmas-time the 

 whole of them return to their village to hold what is called their " congress." 

 Grown rich by trade, the Ehningers have made their village " the prettiest in all 

 Wiirttemberg." 



Fraas, the geologist, has divided the inhabitants of the country into five 



Stuttgart 



