It was the Franks of Franche-Comté, and not the Salians of Clovis, amongst whom we find the dynasty of the Merovings: Ptolemy, at least, places the Μαροὑιγγοι in the country of the Burgundians, anterior to their passage of the Rhine and their conquest of the Gallic provinces beyond it. Hence, the true _Meroving_ was the Burgundian princess Chlotilda, the wife of Clovis, rather than Clovis himself. In _Savoy_ the foreign intermixture has been but small; the population being, in the more mountainous parts at least, simply Romano-Keltic--and then more Keltic than Roman. Dauphiné, Provence, Languedoc, and Gascony carry us to the Ligurian and Iberian areas. Between the second and third Punic wars the Ligyes of Gaul were reduced, rather later than the Ligurians of Italy. They seem from the first to have been a warlike nation. Æschylus, as has been seen, arms them against Hercules; and their brothers in the Apennines defended themselves with valour and obstinacy. The Salyes were their chief tribe. How far they extended inwards is uncertain. It is only safe to say that Provence was Ligurian, and Dauphiné Gallo-Ligurian before it became Romanized: and that the remainder of the ethnological history of the Ligurians of Gaul is nearly the same as that of the Gallic Iberians. Next to the Spanish peninsula, the southern provinces of France were the most deeply tinctured with _Arab_ influences of any part of Europe. In the parts between the Loire and Garonne, Poitou, Santonge, Limoges, and Perigord, exhibit, in a modern form, the names of the ancient Pictones, Santones, Lemovici, and Petrocorii, all of which were Gallic, though, perhaps, not so typically Gallic as the Parisii, Carnutes, Turones, and Bituriges of the Isle of France, the Orleannois, Touraine, and Berri. In these parts the admixture of Roman and Keltic blood, has been less disturbed by subsequent admixture of Arabs and Goths than elsewhere; not that even here it is pure. The Franks of the Netherlands, Lorraine, and the Franks of Burgundy and Franche-Comté must have seriously tinctured the blood even in these parts. Champagne, too, may be in the same category. French Flanders, Artois, and part of Picardy are just more Romano-Keltic and less German than the French provinces of Belgium. Normandy has its peculiar and characteristic Scandinavian elements. If France, then, be essentially and fundamentally Romano-Keltic, it is the parts of which Orleans is the centre, where the mixture is in the most normal proportions; as is shown by even the names of the provinces. Brittany, Normandy, Flanders, Lorraine, Franche-Comté, Burgundy, Provence, Gascony,--each of these indicates something either more or less Roman and Keltic than the typical and central parts of the middle Loire and Seine. Thus,-- 1. Brittany is more Keltic, and consequently less Roman. 2. Normandy, is not only Romano-Keltic, but Scandinavian. 3. Flanders, more or less German. 4. Lorraine, the same.