The operation of these physiological laws upon the population of Europe has been interestingly illustrated by the recent researches of a French naturalist of high reputation, M. Edwards. This gentleman, after perusing Thierry’s _History of the Gauls_, made a tour through France, Belgium, Switzerland, and Italy, engaged in careful study of the present population in relation to the ancient settlers; and he asserts that now, after the lapse of two thousand years, the types of the Cimbri, the Celts, and Iberians are still distinctly traceable among their living descendants, in the very localities where history first descries these early families. Of the inland eastern parts of France, tenanted of old by the Gauls proper, and which were never penetrated into by the Cimbri, who took quiet possession of their outskirts, M. Edwards thus speaks:—“In traversing, from north to south, the part of France which corresponds to Oriental Gaul—viz., Burgundy, Lyons, Dauphiny, and Savoy—I have distinguished that type, so well marked, which ethnographers have assigned to the Gauls.” That is to say, “the head is so round as to approach the spherical form; the forehead is moderate, slightly protuberant, and receding towards the temples; eyes large and open; the nose, from its depression at its commencement to its termination, almost straight—that is to say, without any marked curve; its extremity is rounded, as well as the chin; the stature medium;—the features thus being quite in harmony with the form of the head.” Of the northern part of ancient Gaul, the principal seat of the Belgæ or Cimbri, he says:—“I traversed a great part of the _Gallia Belgica_ of Cæsar, from the mouth of the Somme to that of the Seine; and here I distinguished for the first time the assemblage of features which constitutes the other type, and often to such an exaggerated degree that I was very forcibly struck,—the long head, the broad high forehead, the curved nose, with the point below, and the wings tucked up; the chin boldly developed; and the stature tall.” In the other parts of France (exclusive of the south and west, anciently occupied by the Iberians), M. Edwards found that the Cimbrian type had been overcome by the round heads and straight noses of the Gauls, who were the more numerous because the more ancient race in those parts, and had covered the whole country before the arrival of the Cimbrians.