VARIATIONS IN HUMAN STATURE. 315 



knights' suits would be too small for the cuirassiers of the European 

 armies ; yet they were worn by the selected men, who were better 

 fed, stronger, and more robust than the rest of the population. The 

 bones of the ancient Gauls, which are uncovered in the excavations of 

 tumuli, while they are of large dimensions, are comparable with those 

 of the existing populations of many places in France. 



The Egyptian mummies are the remains of persons of small or me- 

 dium stature, as are also the Peruvian and Mexican mummies, and the 

 mummies and bones found in the ancient monuments of India and 

 Persia. And even the most ancient relics we possess of individuals of 

 the human species, the bones of men who lived in the Tertiary period, 

 an epoch the remote antiquity of which goes back for hundreds of 

 centuries, do not show any important differences in the sizes of the 

 primitive and of the modern man. 



Considerable differences will be found to exist, when we compare 

 the statures of the various races of mankind ; and it is the exaggera- 

 tion of this fact that has given rise to the legends of dwarf and giant 

 peoples. Individuals of the supposed dwarf races would appear quite 

 large if compared with real dwarfs. A dwarf much over three feet 

 high begins to lose interest as a dwarf ; if he reaches four feet and 

 more, he ceases to be a dwarf, and becomes a " little man." Now, the 

 well-shaped adults of the smaller human races always, with very few 

 exceptions, exceed four feet in height. These races are not, therefore, 

 dwarfs, but simply small races. It is, nevertheless, interesting to study 

 them, and compare them with the larger races. So, in these latter 

 races, men much exceeding seven feet are exceptional, and merit the 

 name of giants. Still, the average of stature in these larger races is 

 much more considerable than in the smaller races ; and a man of the 

 average size, among them, would be a giant compared with an average 

 specimen of the smaller races. 



Among the smaller races are the Esquimaux, averaging five feet, 

 two inches ; the Lapps men, five feet one inch, women, four feet 

 seven inches ; the Akkas seen by Schweinfurth in Africa ; the Negritos 

 of the Philippine and Andaman Islands, and Malacca ; the dwarf race 

 of Madagascar ; and the Bushmen, whose height ranges from four 

 feet five inches to four feet six and three fourths inches. 



Among the large races may be mentioned the Norwegians, the 

 Canadians, the North American Indians, the Caffres, the Patagonians, 

 and the Polynesians, the average height of the last two of which is 

 estimated at about six feet. The difference in the mean height of the 

 various human races is, therefore, that between four feet five inches 

 and six feet, or one foot seven inches. The mean between these two 

 numbers is about five feet three inches ; and this standard is gener- 

 ally agreed upon by anthropologists as a division line in the approxi- 

 mative classification of the races according to their height. Those are 

 called medium races which average from five and one fourth to five 



