Note 1325 — Chapter XVI · —Influences Of A Mountain Environment

Turning to Europe we find watch and clock making in the Black Forest and the Jura, wood-carving in the Swiss and Norwegian mountains, bobbin lace in the Erz range and in Alpine Appenzell, and the far more beautiful Italian product of the rugged Abruzzi and the Frioulian Alps. The Slovaks of highland Hungary are expert in wire-drawing,1325 and the peasant of the central Apennines makes from the gut of his goats the finest violin strings in the world, the so-called Roman strings.1326 The low Thuringian and Franconian Forests, which harbor denser populations, have by a minute subdivision of labor turned their local resources to the making of dolls, which they supply to the markets of the world. Here too the manufacture of glass articles, porcelains, majolica and terra-cotta flourishes.1327 Most of these mountain industries merely supplement the scant agricultural resources; they represent the efforts of industrious but hard pressed people to eke out their meager subsistence.