254 OUT OF BOORS. 



accounted for in a similar manner. All ethnologists 

 know that there are many tribes which measure their 

 gentility by the length of their ears ; and by cutting 

 holes in their lobes, and hanging weights to them, suc- 

 ceed at last in getting them to hang down on the 

 shoulders, just as is represented in the Pannothi. As 

 to the nation of pigmies, we all know of several tribes 

 or nations that may very fairly be called by that name ; 

 and although they are not so very small as is repre- 

 sented in the woodcut, they are yet so small that when 

 standing by the side of an European of middle stature 

 the grown men and women seem scarcely bigger than 

 our children of nine or ten. The many-armed monster 

 is evidently borrowed from the Indian temples, which 

 are covered with statues of various deities, scarcely any 

 of which condescend to have less than eight arms. 

 The two-headed monster is due to the same source. 



There is another point which is worthy of notice. 

 Putting aside the centaur, harpy, and mermaid, there 

 is scarcely any of these monsters which is not a real 

 fact. Take, for example, the horned man. Such 

 beings really have existed, as is well known to physio- 

 logists. There is now in the museum at Oxford a 

 portrait of a woman who was remarkable for possessing 

 several horns on her head, and by the portrait is de- 

 posited one of the horns in question. After all, there 

 is nothing so very much out of the way in this curious 

 development. For all the hollow horns, such as were 

 these, are nothing but modifications of hair, and it is 



