238 THE DOAWNVVAUD TE.NUE.NCY 



The traditions and legends concerning the stature of Adam are as 

 different and conflicting as human fancies can be. Dunlop in his Ro- 

 man Literature, quoting from some old writer, fixes Adam's height at one 

 hundred and twenty-three feet and six inches. The Mohammedans ana- 

 thematize all who believe him to be less than forty-one feet high. Thirty- 

 eight feet is the point in the creed of the Swenkfeldians. Stackhouse, a 

 most moderate author, assigns Adam ten feet of corporiety. 



And not only Adam, but the antediluvians also, the children of Anak, 

 the hunters of Nimrod, the contemporaries and the sons of Noah, were 

 all without doubt much above the common height of our times. And 

 so we find all through ancient history down to the times of Hesiod and 

 Homer (when men were a trifle more than eight feet,) a regular down- 

 ward tendency of the human stature. This is, of course, not hard to be- 

 lieve, since the extraordinary length of human life, that man enjoyed be- 

 fore the flood, presupposes a corresponding extraordinary length of 

 human stature — and as the one diminished, so also the other decreased. 



Immediately after the flood the declension was marvellously great, 

 owing most likely to the influence of so much moisture in the atmos- 

 phere and the earth, which in this instance, contrary to the ordinary rule, 

 may have dwarfed rather than promoted growth. From the time of the 

 flood to the destruction of Jerusalem, there is abundant evidence that 

 though the stature of man had decreased, yet that it was still larger 

 than it now is. When Alexander forded the river Granicus, 340 B. C, 

 the passage was effected by one hundred and eighty men joining hands : 

 now the river is six hundred yards wide, and this could not have been done 

 unless the men were in the proportion of seven feet ten inches, making 

 allowance, of course, for the rapidity of the current — it being next to 

 the Ganges the most rapid river in the world. According to Xenophon, 

 the foot-prints of a company of men he was tracking in Persia, were 

 nearly eighteen inches in length ; this even allowing for long shoes, 

 would (according to Davies' method of computation) make the stature of 

 the men at least 1 foot 9 inches and 2 barley corns higher than the pre- 

 .sent ordinary standing. A very careful study of Josephus will convince 

 the reader, that in the times in which he wrote, men could not have 

 been less than 7 feet 71 inches. The bed, which Julius Caesar carried 

 with him in his campaigns, measured eight feet without the feathers, 

 and he understood economy too well to waste either lime, money or room. 

 The specimens of the old Roman toga preset ved in the "Jardin desPlantes," 

 and "the British Museum," are 6 feet and 5 inches long, and when we 

 consider that they were worn on the shoulders, we cannot but perceive 

 that the human stature must have been considerably more than that. 



