Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 52.djvu/493

Rh There can be no doubt that in Germany the phenomenon culminates in frequency for all Europe, and that it tends to disappear in almost direct proportion to the attenuation of the Teutonic racial characteristics elsewhere.

Consider for a moment our map on this page, showing the relative frequency of suicide, with the one on page 472, which we have already described as illustrating the ethnic composition of France. The parallel between the two is almost exact in every detail. There



are again our three areas of Alpine racial occupation—Savoy, Auvergne, and Brittany—in which suicide falls annually below seventy-five per million inhabitants. There, again, is the Rhône Valley, and the broad, diagonal strip from Paris to Bordeaux, characterized alike by strong infusion of Teutonic traits and relative frequency of the same social phenomenon. The great Seine basin is sharply differentiated from the highlands along the eastern frontier; and even the Mediterranean coast strip, distinct from the Alpine and Auvergnat highlands, is indicated. Inspection of these maps betrays at once either a relation of cause and effect or else an extraordinary coincidence.

Consideration of the distribution of suicide in England lends