An enormous amount of investigation with regard to European ethnology has been carried on in recent years. These labours have chiefly consisted in the study of the physical type Ethnology. of different countries or districts, but it is not necessary to consider in detail the results arrived at. It should, however, be pointed out that the idea of an Aryan race may be regarded as definitely abandoned. One cannot even speak with assurance of the diffusion of an Aryan civilization. It is at least not certain that the civilization that was spread by the migration of peoples speaking Aryan tongues originated amongst and remained for a time peculiar to such peoples. The utmost that can be said is that the Aryan languages must in their earliest forms have spread from some geographical centre. That centre, however, is no longer sought for in Asia, but in some part of Europe, so that we can no longer speak of any detachment of Aryan-speaking peoples entering Europe.

The most important works, summarizing the labours of a host of specialists on the races of Europe, are those of Ripley and Deniker. Founding upon a great multitude of data that have been collected with regard to the form of the head, face and nose, height, and colour of the hair and eyes, most of the leading anthropologists seem to have come to the conclusion that there are three great racial types variously and intricately intermingled in Europe. As described and named by Ripley, these are: (1) the Teutonic, characterized by long head and face and narrow aquiline nose, high stature, very light hair and blue eyes; (2) the Alpine, characterized by round head, broad face, variable rather broad heavy nose, medium height and "stocky" frame, light chestnut hair and hazel grey eyes; and (3) the Mediterranean, characterized by long head and face, rather broad nose, medium stature and slender build, dark brown or black hair and dark eyes. The Teutonic race is entirely confined to northwestern Europe, and embraces some groups speaking Celtic languages. It is believed by Ripley to have been differentiated in this continent, and to have originally been one with the other long-headed race, sometimes known as the Iberian, and to the Italians as the Ligurian race, which "prevails everywhere south of the Pyrenees, along the southern coast of France, and in southern Italy, including Sicily and Sardinia," and which extends beyond the confines of Europe into Africa. The Alpine race is geographically intermediate between these two, having its-centre in the Alps, while in western Europe it is spread most widely over the more elevated regions, and in eastern Europe "becomes less pure in proportion as we go east from the Carpathians across the great plains of European Russia." This last race, which is most persistently characterized by the shape of the head, is regarded by Ripley as an intrusive Asiatic element which once advanced as a wedge amongst the earlier long-headed population as far as Brittany, where it still survives in relative purity, and even into Great Britain, though not Ireland, but afterwards retired and contracted its area before an advance of the long-headed races. Deniker, basing his classification on essentially the same data as Ripley and others, while agreeing with them almost entirely with regard to the distribution of the three main traits (cephalic index, colour of hair and eyes, and stature) on which anthropologists rely, yet proceeds further in the subdivision of the races of Europe. He recognizes six principal and four secondary races. The six principal races are the Nordic (answering approximately to the Teutonic of Ripley), the Littoral or Atlanto-Mediterranean, the Ibero-Insular, the Oriental, the Adriatic or Dinaric and the Occidental or Cevenole.

1 See bibliography at the end of the article.

Language.

Although language is no test of race, it is the best evidence for present or past community of social or political life; and nothing is better fitted to give a true impression of the position and relative importance of the peoples of Europe than a survey of their linguistic differences and affinities.? The following table contains the names of the various languages which are still spoken on the continent, as well as of those which, though now extinct, can be clearly traced in other forms. Two asterisks are employed to mark those which are emphatically dead languages, while one indicates those which have a kind of artificial life in ecclesiastical or literary usage.

dialects.

boundaries.

The boundaries of European countries have of course been determined by history, and in some cases only historical events can be held to account for their general situation, Political the influence of geographical conditions being seen only on a minute examination of details. In most cases, however, it is otherwise. The present political boundaries were all settled when the general distribution of population in the continent was in a large measure determined by the geographical conditions, and accordingly the lines along which they run for the most part show the influence of such conditions very clearly, and thus present in many cases a marked contrast to the political boundaries in America and Australia, where the boundaries have often been marked out in advance of the population. In Europe the general rule is that the boundaries tend to run through some thinly peopled strip or tract of country, such as is formed by mountain ranges, elevated tablelands too bleak for cultivation, relatively high ground of no great altitude where soil and climate are less favourable to cultivation than the lower land on either side, or low ground occupied by heaths or marshes or some other sterile soil; but it is the exception for important navigable rivers to form boundaries between countries or even between important administrative divisions of countries, and for such exceptions a special explanation can generally be found. Navigable rivers unite rather than separate, for the obvious reason that they generally flow through populous valleys, and the vessels that pass up and down can touch as easily on one side as the other. Minor rivers, on the other hand, flowing through sparsely peopled valleys frequently form portions of political boundaries simply because they are convenient lines of demarcation. A brief examination of the present political map of Europe will serve to illustrate these rules.

The eastern frontier of the Netherlands begins by running southwards through a marsh nearly parallel to the Ems but nowhere touching it, then winds south or south-westwards through a rather sparsely peopled district to the Rhine. This river it crosses. It then approaches but does not touch the Meuse, but runs for a considerable distance roughly parallel to that river along higher ground, where the population is much more scanty_than in the valley. On the side of Belgium the Dutch boundary is for the most part thoroughly typical, winding between the dreariest parts of the Dutch or Belgium provinces of North Brabant, Limburg and Antwerp. The Scheldt nowhere forms a boundary between countries, not even at its wide estuary. The eastern frontier of Belgium is quite typical both on the side of Germany and Luxemburg. It is otherwise, however, on the south, there that country confines with France, and indeed the whole of the north-east frontier of France may be called a historical frontier, showing the influence of geographical conditions only in details. One of these details, however, deserves attention, the tongue in which it advances northwards into Belgium so as to give to France the natural fortress of Givet, a tongue, be it noted, the outline of which is as typical a boundary as is to be seen in Europe in respect of scantiness of population, apart from the fortress.

The mountainous frontiers of France on the east and south require hardly any comment. Only in the Burgundy Gate between the Vosges and the Jura has an artificial boundary had to be drawn, and even that in a minor degree illustrates the general rule. The division of the Iberian peninsula between Spain and Portugal goes back in effect to the Christian reaction against the Moors. The valley of the Miño and its tributaries establishes a natural connexion between Galicia and the rest of Spain; but an independent crusade against the Moors starting from the lower part of the valley of the Douro resulted in the formation of the kingdom of Portugal, which found its natural eastern limit on the scantily peopled margin of the Iberian tableland, where the rivers cease to be navigable and flow through narrow gorges, that

Of the Swiss frontiers all that it is necessary to remark is that the river Rhine in more than one place marks the boundary, in one, however, where it traverses alluvial flats liable to inundation (on the side of Austria), in the other place where it rushes through a gorge almost throughout typical, the northern is the sea, except where a below the falls of Schaffhausen. The southern frontier of Germany is really artificial boundary runs through Jutland.

In the east of Germany and the north-east of Austria the winding but in spite of the absence of marked physical features it is for the frontier through low plains is the result of the partition of Poland, most part in its details almost as typical as the mountainous frontier on the south of Germany. All the great rivers are crossed. Most of the line runs through a tract of strikingly scanty population, and the dense population in one part of it, where upper Silesia confines with Russian Poland, has been developed since the boundary was fixed. Balkans do not, and the Danube to a large extent does form a In the Balkan Peninsula the most striking facts are that the boundary. Geographical features, however, bring the valley of the Maritsa (eastern Rumelia) into intimate relation with upper Bulgaria, the connexion of which with Bulgaria north of the Balkans had long On the side of Rumania, again, it is the marshes on the left bank been established by the valley of the Isker, narrow as that valley is. of the Danube even more than the river itself that make of that river a frontier. An examination of the eastern boundary of all that is included in Russia in Europe will furnish further illustrations of the general rule.

Tornea and the Tana should be taken as lines of demarcation in Finally, on the north-west of Russia it was only natural that the that thinly peopled region, and it was equally natural that where the

Belgium

97

Denmark (6)

11,373

147

France

15,431

1,980

6,694 18

589

2,185

207,206

Monaco

38,3437

2,465 14

160

8

38,596 14

186

15 13

56,345 26

Greece

1,003

270

Italy

24.974

2,1878

237 18

247

San Marino

110,676

28,460 2

Montenegro

23

::

2,434 15 32,450 14

97

293

II 17

435

Netherlands

3.500

228 15

65

400

34.347

4,160 4

4,660

50,588

5.423 18

153

5.913 7

117

103,671 13

53

18,762

2,555 "1

18

1,908 $

2,494 18

191,994

16,432

133

17,2629

18,618 16

97

Sweden Norway

175

5

173.968 4,566

29

4.785

Switzerland

126,053

2,0017

15,976 2,846

2,231 16

18

2,933 10

66,840

3,314 is

207

5,892 ?

90

37.323

2,008 2

3,328

3.733 14

100

304 18 12? 41,455 14

91

79

341