Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 52.djvu/168

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154
POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

and hills were scarcely affected. The people manifest no physical traits which we are justified in ascribing to them. The Teutonic invasions, however, were of a different character. The invaders, coming perhaps in hopes of booty, yet finding a country more agreeable for residence than their barren northern land, cast in their lot with the natives in many districts forming the great majority of the population. We find their descendants all over Britain to-day.

These Teutonic invaders were all alike in physical type, roughly speaking. We can scarcely distinguish a Swede from a Dane to-day, or either from a native of Schleswig-Holstein, or Friesland, the home of the Jutes, Angles, and Saxons. They are all described to us by chroniclers, and our modern research corroborates the testimony, as tall, tawny-haired, fiercely blue-eyed barbarians. Evidence there is indeed that the Alpine broad-headed race once effected a lodgment in southwest Norway, as we have already said. Our map of that country on a subsequent page shows a persistence greatly attenuated, of that trait all along the coast. Archaeology shows it to have invaded Jutland also in early times; but it seems to be of secondary importance there to-day. The Danes are somewhat broader-headed than the Hanoverians perhaps, but, practically speaking, they are all tall and blond Teutons.

Since we can not follow these invaders over Britain by means of their head form, they being all alike and entirely similar to the already prevailing type in the British Isles previous to their advent, we must have recourse to a contributory kind of evidence. We have at times made use of the testimony of place names heretofore; but it is nowhere else in Europe so clear or convincing as in this particular case. We may trace with some surety each current of the great Teutonic inundation by means of them. Then, having done this and completed our historical treatment of the subject, we may once more take up the main thread of our argument by returning to the study of the living population. We shall thus have the key to the situation well in hand. The distribution of color of hair and eyes and of stature will have a real significance.

Our map on next page, adapted from Canon Taylor's exceedingly valuable little book entitled Names and Places, will serve as the mainstay of our summary. In choosing our shading for it, we had one object in mind, which we can not forbear from stating at the outset. The three shades denoting the Teutonic place names are quite similar in intensity and sharply marked off from the Celtic areas, which we have made black. This is as it should be, for the whole matter involves a contrast of the three with the one which we know to be far more primitive and deep-seated. The witness of spoken language, to which we shall come shortly, would suffice to