The Brittany granite is for the most part fine grained and soft, so that it lends itself easily to be carved, and has been freely employed in churches and secular buildings from the 11th century. But it is readily corroded by the weather, and this has given to denuded surfaces a smooth and rounded shape, and has taken the angles off exposed masses that form tors, and has occasioned the fall of many into utter ruin.
A band of syenite runs from near Lamballe to Cap Fréhel, where it forms magnificent cliffs. Syenite again comes to the surface at Trégastel and on the coast north of Morlaix. The Monts d'Arrée are of Cambrian schist and furnish slates here and there of good quality. Taking a section across the inner basin, the granite is quitted at Plounéour, then the ridge of Cambrian schist is reached, after crossing the culminating point of S. Michel, which is of Cambrian sandstone; when we reach S. Herbot we are on Silurian beds. Continuing our course south, the sandstone makes way for slaty schists, and to this succeeds the grauwacke of Brasparts. The Montagnes Noires belong to the Silurian system.
The Kersanton stone, so extensively employed for figure and foliage sculpture in Lower Brittany, is an amphibolite with mica freely comminuted and distributed through the substance. It is very dark in colour, and hardens with exposure. It comes from quarries to the south of the Rade de Brest.
An interesting deposit is the tertiary limestone of S. Juvat beside the Rance. It is of no great extent, but is of vast commercial importance. The bed is composed of an agglomerate of shells and bones. In places it lies under a deposit of as much as 45 ft. of sand. It is a veritable mine of wealth in a country so destitute of lime as is Brittany.
A mineralogical curiosity is the staurotides found at Baud, Scaer, and in various places about the Blavet. The peasants attach a superstitious value to them as marked with the cross, and in some they affect to recognise the nails. They are often sold on stalls at a Pardon. They are formed by trapdykes that have penetrated the schist, and fused and run together some of its constituents, which have afterwards crystallised, sometimes as parallel prisms, at others as set transversely forming the ordinary or the S. Andrew's Cross.
II. Botany
The botany of Brittany is little varied owing to the slight variation in the soil and subsoil, schist and granite. It is but in rare spots where occurs limestone that the flora is different. It may be roughly divided into the class of plants that affect the inland districts and the moors, and that which flourishes on the seaboard. The flora of a slate and granitic region, whether in Scotland, Cornwall or Brittany, is much the same. In the Guérande, where there are extensive marshes, an interesting collection may be made of aquatic plants, both those living in sweet water bogs and those that grow in brackish water.
A complete flora cannot be here attempted; a brief account must suffice, with indications as to the habitat of the rarer specimens.
As one leaves the Loire, pre-eminently the mouth of the Vilaine, it is easy to note the gradual disappearance of many plants that are common south of them. A few that abound there may still occur, but as stragglers and stunted. And this contrast becomes more striking the further north we go. The cause of the poverty of the Breton flora is the uniformity of the soil and the absence of calcareous rocks, and this deprives us of an entire series of plants that abound in Normandy although the climate there is more rigorous. A small number does exist, but only, as already intimated, where there are pockets of limestone, or else on the seaboard, where they can feed on the wreckage of shells cast up by the sea, and carried inland by the gales with the sand.
The following is a list of the plants found in calcareous soil in Brittany: —
The maritime region is more rich and interesting, and in addition to such as may be found in limestone districts already registered, the following is given as a list of plants that grow in sand: —
Brittany, as already intimated, possesses no true mountains, only elevated moorland. There are consequently to be found there no true mountainous plants. Lycopodium Selago is rare on a few elevated spots; Viola palustris and Polystichum oreopteris belong to a submountainous district. The only exceptional plant is a peculiar form of Silene maritima that grows on the summit of all the rocks of the Monts d' Arrée. This range was once doubtless covered by forest, as is shown by the presence on it of Vaccinium myrtillus, a plant that lives in the shade of trees, and which lingers on, in a stunted condition, although the sheltering boughs are long departed.
The following is a list of some of the plants of Lower Brittany that are rare in the departments of Finistère, Morbihan, and Côtes-du-Nord, omitting the names of those already given as pertaining to calcareous soils and the seaboard sands: —
These in addition have been noted in Finistère: —
These also in the Côtes-du-Nord: —
Côtes-du-Nord has the advantage of the limestone bed of S. Juvat, where many of the plants given in the first list may be gathered. Ille-et-Vilaine is still more favourably situated for calcareous rocks. There is a considerable basin south of Rennes, with a corresponding flora, generally known to botanists as the limestone tract of S. Jacques.
Such plants as are common throughout the country have not been included in the lists.
III. History
Brittany, whose ancient name was Armorica (Ar môr, by the sea), and which was known to the Britons and Irish as Llydau, was originally peopled by the race of the Dolmen-builders, a brown eyed and dark haired people, who strewed it with their monuments. To them followed the Gauls, blue eyed and with flaxen hair; these latter were divided into five tribes that occupied severally the departments of Ille-et-Vilaine (Redones), with their capital at Rennes; Côtes-du-Nord (Curiosoliti), with their headquarters at Corseul, near Dinan; Finistère (Osismi), their capital of Carhaix; Morbihan (Veneti), with their centre at Vannes; Loire Inférieure (Nanneti), with a capital at Nantes.
These tribes were subjugated by Cæsar, and the Veneti almost exterminated by him. Under the Romans, the culture and the language of the conquerors were rapidly assimilated. Christianity took root at Rennes and Nantes and Vannes, but almost nothing was done for the rural population, which probably still spoke its agglutinative tongue akin to the modern Basque. The stately bishops of these Gallo-Roman cities confined themselves to ministering to the cultured residents within their walls, and in villas scattered along the coast. The Gallo-Roman population had dwindled to an incredible extent, under the exactions of the imperial tax-gatherers, so that all the country residences fell into ruin, and the impoverished Gallo-Romans withdrew into the towns. But early – very early in the 5th century, fleets of British settlers came over, flying from the swords of Picts and Scots, and occupied the land about the mouth of the Loire. By 469 they were so numerous as to be able to send a contingent of twelve thousand men to the assistance of the Romans against the Visigoths.
As a consequence of the Saxon invasion of Britain the immigration grew, and the dispossessed islanders sought and found a new home in the Armorican peninsula, where they established themselves under their own princes, with their own institutions, civil and ecclesiastical, and their own tongue. Thenceforth Armorica ceased to be so called, and received the name of Lesser Britain, and the current language became British, identical with that now spoken in Wales, and spoken till the 17th century in Cornwall as well. Contact with France along the East has gradually thrust back the Breton language, but it is still spoken from Guingamp, in a slanting line to the mouth of the Loire. Two British kingdoms were formed, Domnonia and Cornubia; the former included the Côtes-du-Nord and Finistère above the river Elorn, and Cornubia or Cornouaille was the district below