Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 51.djvu/313

Rh are here in opposition to the manifest blurring of all sharp racial lines and divisions. Despite this disturbing influence, the Auvergnat area appears as a great wedge of pigmentation penetrating the center of France on the south. This is somewhat broken up on the northern edge, because of the recent immigration of a considerable mining population into this district which has come



from other parts of the country. The Rhone Valley appears as a route of migration of blondness toward the south. Little more than these general features can be gathered from the map of color, except that the progressive brunetteness as we advance toward the south is everywhere in evidence. Were we to examine the several parts of France in detail we should find competent explanations for many features which appear as anomalous—as, for example, the extreme blondness upon the southwest coast of Brittany.

The map of stature still preserves evidence of the threefold division of the short Alpine people into Savoyards, Auvergnats, and Bretons. It demonstrates in great clearness the influence of the Rhone Valley in the production of tall stature. In this case the process is cumulative, for the fertile valley productive of