iii. 5. The Count de Buat
(Hist. des Peuples de l'Europe, tom. vi. p. 370) ascribes the fecundity
of the Alemanni to their easy adoption of strangers. ----Note: "This
explanation," says Mr. Malthus, "only removes the difficulty a little
farther off. It makes the earth rest upon the tortoise, but does not
tell us on what the tortoise rests. We may still ask what northern
reservoir supplied this incessant stream of daring adventurers.
Montesquieu's solution of the problem will, I think, hardly be admitted,
(Grandeur et Decadence des Romains, c. 16, p. 187.) * * * The whole
difficulty, however, is at once removed, if we apply to the German
nations, at that time, a fact which is so generally known to have
occurred in America, and suppose that, when not checked by wars and
famine, they increased at a rate that would double their numbers in
twenty-five or thirty years. The propriety, and even the necessity, of
applying this rate of increase to the inhabitants of ancient Germany,
will strikingly appear from that most valuable picture of their manners
which has been left us by Tacitus, (Tac. de Mor. Germ. 16 to 20.) * *
* With these manners, and a habit of enterprise and emigration, which
would naturally remove all fears about providing for a family, it is
difficult to conceive a society with a stronger principle of increase
in it, and we see at once that prolific source of armies and colonies
against which the force of the Roman empire so long struggled with
difficulty, and under which it ultimately sunk. It is not probable that,
for two periods together, or even for one, the population within the
confines of Germany ever doubled itself in twenty-five years. Their
perpetual wars, the rude state of agriculture, and particularly the very
strange custom adopted by most of the tribes of marking their barriers
by extensive deserts, would prevent any very great actual increase of
numbers. At no one period could the country be called well peopled,
though it was often redundant in population. * * * Instead of clearing
their forests, draining their swamps, and rendering their soil fit to
support an extended population, they found it more congenial to their
martial habits and impatient dispositions to go in quest of food, of
plunder, or of glory, into other countries." Malthus on Population, i.
p. 128.--G.]

[Footnote 94a: The course of the Neckar was likewise strongly guarded.
The hyperbolical eulogy of Symmachus asserts that the Necka