314 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



search, and to indicate the path which promises to be most favorable 

 in the future. If my life proves to be as long as your patience, there 

 will be plenty of opportunities hereafter to consider some points which 

 I have been unable to touch upon to-day. 



VARIATIONS IN HUMAN STATURE. 



By M. GUYOT DAUBES. 



THE study of human stature involves several questions of more 

 important interest than that of mere theory or curiosity. It may 

 aid us in learning whether the human race is really degenerating, as 

 some persons assert, by determining whether our ancestors in heroic 

 and prehistoric times had the superior physical prowess that is often 

 ascribed to them. It should teach us whether there are races of 

 dwarfs and of giants, and what are the distances separating the races 

 that most nearly approach those descriptions. We learn from it the 

 exact facts respecting the differences in stature among the people of a 

 single nation, our own, for instance, to which military men attach 

 high value. Other fields of inquiry, of a practical bearing, regard the 

 causes that influence the stature of populations and races in general, 

 and the growth of individuals, from infancy up ; and the influence of 

 stature upon the force, agility, endurance, and physical development 

 of individuals. An opinion was current, in the last century, that our 

 ancestors, at some time in the past, were the equals or superiors in 

 size to the largest men now to be found. M. Henrion presented to 

 the Academie des Inscriptions, in 1718, a memoir on the variations in 

 the size of man from the beginning of the world till the Christian era, 

 in which Adam was given one hundred and twenty-three feet nine 

 inches, and Eve one hundred and eighteen feet nine and three fourths 

 inches. But after the first pair, the human race, in his imagination, 

 suffered a regular decrease, so that Noah was only one hundred feet 

 high, while Abraham shrank down to twenty-eight feet, Moses to thir- 

 teen feet, the mighty Hercules to ten feet eight and a half inches, and 

 Alexander the Great to a bare six feet and a half. The communica- 

 tion, it is said, was received with enthusiasm, and was regarded, at the 

 time, as a " wonderful discovery" and a "sublime vision." 



The complaint about the degeneracy of the human race is not new, 

 but dates as far back as the time of Homer, at least ; for the men of 

 his day were not like the heroes of whom he sang. It is not confirmed, 

 but is contradicted by all the tangible facts, and these are not a few. 

 Human remains that are exhumed, after having reposed in the grave 

 formany centuries, as in the Catacombs of Paris, have nothing gigantic 

 about them. The armor, the cuirasses, and the casques of the warriors 

 of the middle ages, can be worn by modern soldiers ; and many of the 



