140 NATURAL HISTORY OF 



conjunction with Giant tribes, are nevertheless much 

 more numerous, more generally diffused, and bear 

 evidence of greater antiquity, wherever they are located. 

 In some instances supplying, by ingenuity, the want 

 of superior strength, they appear possessed of a certain 

 progress in civilization greater than the conquering 

 tribes. Either from a kind of instinctive impulse, 

 aiding natural intelligence, or from a docile spirit 

 taking counsel, when the sense of physical inability 

 prevails ; from experience ; or from instruction obtain- 

 ed in the Caucasian or even Mongolic stocks, to which 

 they appear directly or indirectly related they are 

 miners, metallurgists, smiths, and architects, When 

 not driven to the woods and fastnesses, they have agri- 

 cultural habits and superstitions of a low polytheistical 

 character, but bearing evidence of systematic organi- 

 zation. These qualities, in conjunction with retiring 

 defensive habits, have, in every region, conferred upon 

 them mystical properties, generally marked in legends 

 by more excessively reducing their stature. Thence, 

 we have Indian mythological Balakhilyas and Dwara- 

 pulas ; in Western Asia, Eliud, Peri, Gin ; Celtic 

 Dubh ; Northern Elfin ; Dwergar, always marked with 

 Ouralian, Finnic, and Mongolian peculiarities ; passing 

 to more poetical fairies and pigmies, and then to true 

 Fins, Laplanders, Ostiaks, Samoyeds, Skrelings, and 

 Myrmidons (of Achilles) afterwards named Elfin, in 

 the woods of Thrace, and in the Hartz, Tyrolean, and 

 Pyrenean mountains, where they are evidently the pre- 

 sent Basques ; all attesting a similar dualism of fancy 



