of the Paris-Bordeaux axis of fertility. At the northwest appears the lower edge of the broad-headedness of the area of Brittany; then succeeds a belt of long heads from Paris to Bordeaux, to the
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| Mediterranean Type.Montpellier. Cephalic Index, 79·6. | Alpine Type.Aveyron. Cephalic Index, 86. |
south of which comes the main feature—a central strip of the Alpine type pushing its way to the extreme southwest, as we have said. The portrait herewith is a good example of the last-named round-headed type, which forms the bulk of the population. We are confronted by a racial distribution which appears to be utterly at variance with all the laws which elsewhere in France determine the ethnic character of its population.
One point is certain: either conditions have changed wonderfully since Strabo's time, or else the old geographer was far from being a discriminating anthropologist, when he described the people of Aquitaine as uniformly Iberians, both in race and in customs. A large element among them is as far removed from the Spaniards in race as it is possible in Europe to be. There is, as our map shows, a strip all along the Mediterranean which is Iberically narrow-headed and oval-faced, of a type illustrated in our portrait. Especially is this true in the department of Pyrenées-Orientales, shown on our map by the banded white area. This is the only part of France where the Catalan language is spoken to-day, as we took occasion to point out in our first article. This population in Roussillon is truly Iberian both in race and language; all the other peoples of Aquitaine differ from the Spaniards in both respects.[1]
- ↑ The prime authority upon this part of France is again Dr. Collignon. Vide Mem. Soe. d'Anth., Paris, series 3, i, fasc. 3 and 4. Condensed statement of his views is given in
