on so large a scale exercises far reaching economic and
historical influences. Norse colonization contributed interesting
chapters to the history of Europe in the ninth and tenth centuries.
Norwegians who have flocked to America have made a deep impress upon our
Northwestern States. Switzerland in 1902 and 1903 gave as 9500 of its
subjects, a valuable contribution. Scotchmen of Highland birth are
scattered over the whole world, carrying with them everywhere their
sturdy qualities of character. Even the stay-at-home French lose
emigrants from their mountain districts. The people of the Basses-Alps
go to Mexico, and the Basques from the French Pyrenees seek
Argentine.[1341] The honesty, industry, and frugality of these mountain
emigrants make them desirable elements in any colonial population, and
insure their success when they seek their fortunes in the uncrowded
western world.

The alternative to overpopulation and its remedy emigration is found in
preventive checks to increase. These sometimes take the form of
restricted or late marriages, as Malthus found to be the case in Norway
and Switzerland in 1799,[1342] before the introduction of steam or
electric motive power had stimulated the industries of these countries
or facilitated emigration thence. The same end is achieved by the
widespread religious celibacy which sometimes characterizes mountain
communities. In the barren Auvergne Plateau of France, the number of
younger sons who become priests is extraordinary. Many daughters become
nuns. Celibacy, seconded by extensive emigration, clears the field for
the eldest son and the system of primogeniture which the poverty of this
rugged highland has established as a fixed institution in the
Auvergne.[1343] A careful statistical investigation of the geographical
origins of the Catholic priesthood in Europe might throw interesting
light on the influences of environment. The harsh conditions of mountain
life make the monastery a line of least resistance, while geographical
isolation nourishes the religions nature and benumbs the intellectual
activities.

It is in the corrugated highland of Tibet, chilled to barrenness by an
elevation of 12,000 feet or more (4000 meters), sterile and treeless
from aridity, carved by canon-cutting streams into deep gorges offering
a modicum of arable soil for irrigation, that monasticism has developed
into an effective system to keep down population. Buddhism, with its
convents and lamaseri