Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 51.djvu/316

This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
304
POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

serve as an illustration. We have already made use of one in a preceding paper. It is reproduced for purposes of comparison.

In view of the nature of these physical changes induced by ethnic crossing along the seacoast, we must look to the Teutonic race for the lineage of the invaders. They must, on the whole, have been light and long-headed. History, in this case, comes to our aid. The Saxon pirates skirted the whole coast around to the mouth of the Loire. In fact, they were so much in evidence that part of it was known to the old geographers as the litus Saxonicum. The largest colony which has left permanent traces of its invasion in the character of its present population, although

Cæsar assured us that he exterminated it utterly, is located in Morbihan. This department on the south coast of the peninsula, as our map of coloration of all France shows, is one of the blondest in all France. Its capital, Vannes, derives its name from the Venetes, whose confederation occupied this area. Both Strabo and Diodorus of Sicily asserted that these people belonged to the Belgaæ (Teutonic stock), although modern historians of Gaul seem inclined to deny it. Our anthropological evidence is all upon the side of the ancient geographers.

From a different source, although due indirectly to these same Teutonic barbarians, are derived the physical characteristics of the people in the north of Brittany, near Dinan, in the valley of the Ranee. Its location appears upon both of our maps of Brittany.