Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 51.djvu/457

Rh the heads are often more Teutonic in form than those of the peoples of direct Germanic descent along the Belgian frontier; nay, more, in some cantons the people outdo the purest Scandinavians in this respect. This region is also separated from all Teutonic centers across country by several hundred miles of broader-headed peoples. That disposes of the theory of colonization from the north across France. Could the Teutons have come around by sea, then, following the litus Saxonicum described in our last paper? Obviously not so; for, as we shall see, the deepest pit of long-headedness lies far inland, about the city of Périgueux. If this be due to immigrants, they certainly could not have come in ships. Is it possible, then, that the people of these departments could have come from the south, an offshoot of the Mediterranean type? If so, they must have come over the Pyrenees or else across the low pass down the course of the Garonne. In either case a great dike of brachycephaly must have been heaped up behind them, cutting off all connection with their base of racial supplies. And then, after all, we do not place too much reliance in any case upon theories of such wholesale bodily migration that populous departments among the largest in France are completely settled in a moment. Human beings in masses do not, as my friend Major Livermore has put it, play leap-frog across the map in that way, save under great provocation or temptation. We look for slow-moving causes, not cataclysms, just as the geologists have long since learned to do.

We may gain an idea of the reality of this curious phenomenon if we turn to our second map, in which the same region is charted in great detail. The head form is here given by cantons, small administrative divisions intermediate between the department and the commune or township. The location of the capital cities of Limoges and Périgueux, on both maps, will enable the reader to orient himself at once. The "key" shows the boundaries of the departments. It is clear that a series of concentric circles of increasing long-headedness—that is, of light tints upon the map—point to a specific area where an extreme human type is prevalent.

History offers no clew to the situation. The country in question, in Caesar's time, was occupied by a number of tribes of