Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 51.djvu/29

Rh In France save in a little spot to the southwest of this, where similar conditions prevail. Here in Limousin there is a barren range of low hills which lies along the dividing line between the departments of Dordogne, Corréze and Haute-Vienne, about halfway between Périgueux and Limoges. The water courses on our map show the location of these uplands. They extend over an area about seventy-five miles long and half as wide, wherein average human misery is most profound. Dense ignorance prevails. There is more illiteracy than in any other part of France. The contrast in stature, even with the low average of all the surrounding region, is clearly marked by the dark tint. There are sporadic bits of equal diminutiveness elsewhere to the south and west, but none are so extended or so extreme. Two thirds of the men are below five feet three inches in height in some of the communes, and the women are three or more inches shorter even than this. One man in ten is below four feet eleven inches in stature. This is not due to race, for several racial types are equally stunted in this way within the same area. It is primarily due to generations of subjection to a harsh climate, to a soil which is worthless for agriculture, to a steady diet of boiled chestnuts and stagnant water, and to unsanitary dwellings in the deep, narrow, and damp valleys. Still further proof may be found to show that these people are not stunted by any hereditary influence, for it has been shown that children born here, but who migrate and grow up elsewhere, are normal in height; while those born elsewhere, but who are subject to this environment during the growing period of youth, are proportionately dwarfed.

We have referred in the preceding paragraph to another similar "misery spot" to the southwest of the Limousin hills. It is dotted black upon the map of Europe. The cause is here the same. The department of Landes derives its name from the great expanse of flat country, barely above the sea level, which stretches away south of Bordeaux. There is no natural drainage slope. The subsoil is an impervious clay. In the rainy season, water accumulates and forms stagnant marshes, covered with rank vegetation. At other times the water dries away, and the vegetation dies and rots. Malaria was long the curse of the land. Government works are to-day reclaiming much of it for cultivation and health, but it will be generations before the people recover from the physical degeneration of the past. Influences akin to these have undoubtedly been of great effect in many other parts of Europe, especially in. the south of Italy, in Sardinia and Spain, where the largest area of short statures in Europe prevails to-day.