Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 51.djvu/460

446 the country changes abruptly to a calcareous formation along the south and west. The district is accounted the very poorest in all France. Its soil is worthless even for grazing; the water is bad, and the climate harsh and rigorous.

These hills of Limousin, as we pointed out in a preceding paper, are, so to speak, a veritable watershed of stature as well. The bridge of relative broad-headedness we have described as lying along this line is but one among several peculiarities. The people of these hills are among the shortest in all Europe. Imagine a community whose members are so dwarfed and stunted by misery that their average stature is only about five feet two inches! Many cantons exist in which over thirty per cent of the men are under five feet three inches tall; and a few where two thirds of them all are below this height, with nearly ten per cent shorter than four feet eleven inches. With women shorter than this by several inches, the result is frightful. Around this area we find concentric circles of increasing stature as the river course are descended and the material prosperity of the people becomes greater. Within it the regular diet of boiled chestnuts and bad water, with a little rye or barley; the miserable huts unlighted by windows, huddled together in the deep and damp valleys; and the extreme poverty and ignorance, have produced a population in which nearly a third of the men are physically unfit for military service. This geographical barrier, potent enough to produce so degenerate a population, lies, as we have said, exactly along the boundary between the descendants of the Lemovices about Limoges and the Petrocorii about Périgueux. To make it plain beyond question, we have marked the stunted area upon our map of cephalic index. The correspondence is exact. It also shows beyond doubt that this short stature is a product of environment and not of race; for our degenerate area overlies all types of head form alike, whether Alpine or other.

Here, then, is an anthropological as well as a geographical boundary, separating our long-headed tribes from one another. Without going into details, let it suffice to say that complexions change as well. To the north and east about Limoges the blond characteristics rise to an absolute majority, especially among the women; in the contrary direction, about Périgueux, the proportion of brunettes increases considerably. In short, the general association of characteristics is such as to prove that among the Lemovices there is a considerable infusion of Teutonic blood. They are the extreme vanguard of the Germanic invaders who have come in from the northeast. That accounts at once for their long-headedness. Similar to them are the populations west of Bordeaux in Médoc (vide key map). They also are remnants of the same blond, tall, long-headed type; but they have come around