Mediterranean.  Corsica and Sardinia, lying off the main routes of travel in this basin, are two of the most primitive and isolated spots of Europe.  Here the old wooden plow of Roman days is still in common use as it is in Crete, and feudal institutions of the Middle Ages still prevail to some extent[921],—­a fact which recalls the long survival of feudalism in Japan.  The little Isle of Man, almost in sight of the English coast, has retained an old Norse form of government.  Here survives the primitive custom of orally proclaiming every new law from the Tynwald Hill before it can take effect,[922] and the other ancient usage of holding the court of justice on the same hill under the open sky.  The Faroe Islands and Iceland are museums of Norse antiquities.  The stamp of isolation and therefore conservatism is most marked in the remoter, northern islands.  Surnames are rare in Iceland, and such as exist are mostly of foreign origin.  In their place, Christian names followed by the patronymic prevail; but in the Faroes, these patronymics have in a great many cases become recognized as surnames.  So again, while the Faroese women still use a rude spinning-wheel introduced from Scotland in 1671, in Iceland this spinning-wheel was still an innovation in 1800, and even to-day competes with spindles.  Hand-querns for grinding wheat, stone hammers for pounding fish and roots, the wooden weighing-beam of the ancient Northmen, and quaint marriage customs give the final touch of aloofness and antiquity to life on these remote islands.[923]

[Sidenote:  Effects of small area in islands.]

As all island life bears more or less the mark of isolation, so it betrays the narrow area that has served at its base.  Though islands show a wide variation in size from the 301,000 square miles (771,900 square kilometers) of New Guinea or the 291,000 square miles (745,950 square kilometers) of Borneo to the private estates like the Scilly Isles, Gardiner and Shelter islands off Long Island, or those small, sea-fenced pastures for sheep and goats near the New England coast and in the Aegean, yet small islands predominate; the large ones are very few.  Islands comprise a scant seven per cent. of the total land area of the earth, and their number is very great,—­nine hundred, for instance, in the Philippine group alone.  Therefore small area is a conspicuous feature of islands generally.  It produces in island people all those effects which are characteristic of small, naturally defined areas, especially early or precocious social, political and cultural development.  The value of islands in this respect belongs to the youth of the world, as seen in the ancient Mediterranean, or in the adolescence of modern primitive races; it declines as the limitations rather than the advantages of restricted territory preponderate in later historical development.

[Sidenote:  Political dominion of small islands.]