Il8 MAN: PAST AND PRESENT. [CHAP. 



Assa (3300 B.C.) by his officer, Baurtet. Some 70 years later 

 Heru-Khuf, another officer, was sent by Pepi II "to bring back 

 a pygmy alive and in good health," from the land of great trees 

 away to the south 1 . That the Danga came from the south we 

 know from a later inscription at Kartrak, and that the word 

 meant dwarf is clear from the accompanying determinative of 

 a short person of stunted growth. 



It is curious to note in this connection that the limestone 

 statue of the dwarf Nem-hotep, found in his tomb at Sakkara 

 and figured by Ernest Grosse, has a thick elongated head suggest- 

 ing artificial deformation, unshapely mouth, dull expression, strong 

 full chest, and small deformed feet, on which he seems badly 

 balanced. It will be remembered that Schweinfurth's Akkas from 

 Mangbattuland were also represented as top-heavy, although the 

 best observers, Junker and others, describe those of the Welle and 

 Congo forests as shapely and by no means ill-proportioned. 



Prof. Kollmann also, who has examined the remains of the 

 Neolithic pygmies from the Schweizersbild Station, 



Negritoes 



and Pygmy Switzerland, "is quite certain that the dwarf-like 



Folklore. . - . , . 



proportions of the latter have nothing in common 

 with diseased conditions. This, from many points of view, is 

 a highly interesting discovery. It is possible, as Dr Niiesch 

 suggests, that the widely-spread legend as to the former existence 

 of little men, dwarfs and gnomes, who were supposed to haunt 

 caves and retired places in the mountains, may be a reminiscence 

 of these Neolithic pygmies 2 ." 



This is what may be called the picturesque aspect of the 

 Negrito question, which it seems almost a pity to spoil by too 

 severe a criticism. But " ethnologic truth " obliges us to say 

 that the identification of the African Negrito with Kollmann's 

 European dwarfs still lacks scientific proof. Even craniology fails 

 us here, and although the Negritoes are in great majority round- 

 headed, Dr R. Verneau has shown that there may be exceptions 3 , 



1 Schiaparelli, Una Tomba Egiziana, Rome, 1893. 



2 Prof. James Geikie, Scottish Geogr. Mag. Sept. 1897. 



:{ Thus he finds (U Anthropologie, 1896, p. 153) a presumably Negrito 

 skull from the Babinga district, Middle Sangha river, to be distinctly long- 

 headed (73*2) with, for this race, the enormous cranial capacity of about 



