Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 51.djvu/458

444 whose racial affinity we know nothing. On the west dwelt the Santones by the present city of Saintes (ancient Saintonge). The city of Périgueux, which gave its name to the ancient province of Périgord, marks the territory of the Petrocorii of Roman times. The province of Limousin to the northeast of it was the home of the Lemovices, with their capital at the modern city of Limoges. Around the ancient city at Bordeaux lay the Bituriges and their allies the Medulli (Médoc). Along the east lay the Arvergni, whence the name Auvergne; together with a number of minor tribes, such as the Cadurci, giving name to the district of Quercy to-day. Unless the population has shifted extensively, contrary to all ethnological experience, the people whose physical origin is so puzzling to us included the tribes of the Lemovices and especially the Petrocorii. For these two covered the main body of narrow-headedness shown upon our map, extending over two thirds of the department of Dordogne, and up into Haute-Vienne and Charente beyond the city of Angoulême. It appears as if we had to do with two tribes whose racial origin was profoundly different from that of all their neighbors. The frontier on the southeast, between the Petrocorii and the Arverni, seems to-day to have been the sharpest of all. In places there is a sudden drop of over five units in cephalic index at the boundary lines. This means a change of type almost as great as that indicated between our two portraits on a preceding page. This is especially marked at the frontiers of the two modern departments of Corrèze and Dordogne, as our "key" map shows. This racial boundary finds no parallel in distinctness elsewhere in France, save between the Bretons and Normans. In this present case, the people are distinct because the modern boundaries coincide exactly with the ancient ecclesiastical and political ones. For centuries the Arverni in Corrèze have turned their backs upon the Petrocorii in Périgord on fête days, market days, at the paying of taxes, or examination of conscripts. This they did as serfs in the middle ages, and they do it to-day as freemen when they go to the polls to vote. Each has looked to its capital city for all social inspiration and support. The result has been an absence of intercourse, with its attendant consequences. Artificial selection has sharpened the contrasts imposed in the first instance by differences of physical descent. It is one of those rare cases where political boundaries are competent to perpetuate and even to accentuate natural peculiarities due to race.

Let us now concentrate our attention upon these two peoples clustering about the modern cities of Périgueux and Limoges respectively—separated alike from all their neighbors by their long-headedness. Closer inspection at once reveals that each of these two cities is to-day the kernel of a distinct subcenter of