Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 52.djvu/80

68 in the different strata of crania in the burial places. The general extent of this Slavonization of Germany is indicated upon our large double-page map of brunette types. The wedge of color which seems to follow down the Oder and over nearly to Holstein is undoubtedly of such origin. Because of this historic movement Saxony, Brandenburg, and Mecklenburg are less purely Teutonic than they once were in respect of pigmentation. The whole east is, as we have already seen, broader-headed, shading off imperceptibly into the countries where pure Slavic languages are in daily use. Thus the contrast in customs and traditions between the eastern and western Germans, which historians since Cæsar have commented upon, seems to have an ethnic basis of fact upon which to rest.

We have now studied the Teutons at home and in their wanderings on the mainland. In our next article we shall see how profoundly they have modified the ethnic complexion of the British Isles. Then we shall be prepared to see how much truth there is in the theory, boldly proclaimed as a proved fact, that they were the original Aryan inventors of European civilization, as well as the chosen agents for its dissemination.



Y setter comes out of the underwoods, after one of his incursive rambles, garnished with strings of green "stickers" and with harsh, brown burs clinging tenaciously to the long, feathery hairs of his tail and about his legs and ears. I have kept in the narrow path to avoid these pests of the autumn woods only to find that they have laid fast hold upon my clothes when by some unwitting step I brushed against the border tangle. In picking them off I notice their curious forms and the fact that they are not all alike. Here are some slender darts that seem to hold by barbed heads; there a row of flattened pods clinging by their whole surface; while numberless tiny brown burs are gathered in groups or scattered promiscuously about trouser legs and coat skirt.

It is strange how an interest is suddenly awakened about the most commonplace objects in life. We move for years among old, familiar things without giving them a passing thought, when all at once some subtle spell is cast about them, and they become vested with a charming interest. I have tramped many times through autumn woods and picked off the "stickers" with no good will, but to-day they strike