544 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



Cape Horn found there the Patagonians, whose dimensions they sin- 

 gularly exaggerated. Pigafetta, the companion of Magellan in the 

 first voyage round the world (1520), pretended that he and his com- 

 panions scarcely reached to the height of their waists. One of his 

 successors, Jofre Loaysa, with still greater extravagance, declared 

 that the heads of the Christians reached only to the upper part of their 

 thighs. This was, you see, to attribute to these people a height of 

 13 to 1G feet, 



Time and science have done justice to these fables and exaggera- 

 tions. Let us see what are in reality the extremes presented by the 

 human stature. 



It is plain that in this research we must leave out exceptional in- 

 dividuals, of which we see a certain number in the fairs and museums, 

 or anywhere, for money. It is a question neither of General Tom 

 Thumb, whom you have perhaps met sometimes in the Champs 

 Elysees, nor of the French or Chinese giants, recently exhibited in 

 Paris. I will only remark, in passing, that these individual exceptions 

 appear among all nations, although more rarely, perhaps, in the midst 

 of savage populations. 



The smallest known race is that of the Bushman, which inhabits 

 the southern part of Africa ; the greatest is the Patagonian, of which 

 we just named the country. An English traveller, Barrow, measured 

 all the inhabitants of a tribe of the first; a French traveller, Alcide 

 d'Orbigny, took the exact measure of a great number of individuals 

 belomnnfir to the second of these two extreme races. 



It results from these measurements that the mean height of the 

 Bushman is 4 feet 3-J inches, and that of the Patagonian 5 feet 8 

 inches. The mean difference between the greatest and the smallest 

 human race is then 16 -J inches. 



The smallest Bushman measured by Barrow was a woman who 

 was only 3 feet 10 inches. The largest Patagonian measured by 

 D'Orbigny attained 6 feet 3 inches. The greatest difference existing, 

 then, between normal human individuals is 2 feet 8|- inches. The ratio 

 between the extremes of height just named is nearly as 1 to 0.6. These 

 figures signify much and lead to important consequences. 



First, the difference in size among our domestic animals is much 

 greater than that above indicated. From the great dogs that prom- 

 enade in our court-yards, down to certain dogs which have figured at 

 dog-shows, the ratio is 1 to 0.3. The difference is also as great be- 

 tween the lar<?e brewers' horses of London and horses from Shetland, 

 which are sometimes not larger than a Newfoundland dog. These 

 horses and these dogs are, however, only different races of a single 

 species. One cannot reason, then, from differences of height to sustain 

 the multiplicity of human species. 



There is another consideration not less important : 



From all the data I can gather, it results that the mean stature of 



