282 Professor Flower [April 13, 



any number of times, furnish the most acceptable evidence that an 

 anthropologist can possess of many of the most important physical 

 characters of a race. There we have facts which can always be 

 appealed to in support of statements and inferences based on them. 

 Height, proportions of limbs, form of head, characters of the face 

 even, are all more rigorously determined from the bones than they 

 can be on the living person. Therefore, the value of these remains, 

 imperfect as they unfortunately are, and of course insufficient in 

 number for the purpose of establishing average characters, is very 

 great indeed. 



As I have entered fully into the question of their peculiarities 

 elsewhere,* I can only give now a few of the most important and 

 most generally to be understood results of their examination. The 

 first point of interest is their size. The two skeletons are both those 

 of full-grown people, one a man, the other a woman. There is no 

 reason to suppose that they were specially selected as excej^tionally 

 small ; they were clearly the only ones w^hich I^min had an oppor- 

 tunity of procuring ; yet they fully bear out, more than bear out, all 

 that has been said of the diminutive size of the race. Comparing the 

 dimensions of the bones, one by one, with those of the numerous 

 Andamanese that have passed through my hands, I find both of these 

 Akkas smaller, not than the average, but smaller than the smallest ; 

 smaller also than any Bushman whose skeleton I am acquainted with, 

 or whose dimensions have been published with scientific accm-acy. 

 In fact, they are both, for they are nearly of a size, the smallest 

 normal human skeletons which I have seen, or of which I can find 

 any record. I say normal, because they are thoroughly well-grown 

 and proportioned, without a trace of the deformity almost always 

 associated with individual dwarfishness in a taller race. One only, 

 that of the female, is sufficiently perfect for articulation. After due 

 allowance for some missing vertebrae, and for the intervertebral 

 spaces, the skeleton measures from the crown of the head to the 

 ground exactly 4 feet, or 1 '218 metre. About half an inch more for 

 the thickness of the skin of the head and soles of the feet would 

 complete the height when alive. The other (male) skeleton was 

 (judging by the length of the femur) about a quarter of an inch 

 shorter. 



The full-grown woman of whom Emin gives detailed dimensions 

 is stated to be only 1-164: metre, or barely 3 feet 10 inches.f These 

 heights are all unquestionably less than anything that has been yet 

 obtained based upon such indisputable data. One very interesting 



* In a paper read before the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and 

 Ireland, February 14th, 1888, which will be published in the August number of 

 the Journal. 



t In his letters Emin speaks of an Akka man as " 3 feet 6 inches " high 

 though this does not profess to be a scientific accurate observation, as does the 

 above. He says of this man that his whole body was covered by thick, stiff hair, 

 almost like felt, as was the case with all the Akkas he had yet examined. 



