338 ON SECLUDED TRIBES OP UNCIVILIZED MEN. 



ing spirit. They acknowledge also that there are certain phantoms 

 to be met with in the woods or among the rocks — genii of rivers and 

 other natural objects. We can scarcely read their statements with- 

 out reverting to the Oreads and wood-nymphs, to the votive tablets 

 and the garlands of the temples, and to the romantic myths of Numa 

 and Egeria. "The Grod who cries out when it thunders," is also 

 evidently a counterpart of the Eoman Jupiter Tonans. 



The physique of the Veddahs is wretched in the extreme. The 

 tallest one which Mr. Bailey had ever seen was five feet three inches 

 in height. He was more civilized than his fellows, and probably 

 had been more favoured in the matter of nutriment. The shortest 

 was four feet one inch. Tennent describes those whom he saw as 

 having projecting mouths, stunted stature, their long black hair and 

 beards falling down to their middle in uncombed lumps, their limbs 

 misshapen and their eyes restless with apprehension. The children 

 had deformed joints, huge heads and "protuberant stomachs." The 

 women were most repulsive in their appearance. The men, he says, 

 were athletic, though deformed, and their heads large. On this 

 last point he formed an erroneous judgment, as the crania of the 

 Veddahs are really small, though the mass of tangled hair which 

 surrounds them exaggerates their actual size. The same error was 

 fallen into by the "Theban traveller," whose experiences are re- 

 corded in the treatise De Moribus Brachmanorum, supposed to be 

 written by Palladius in, I think, the early part of the fifth century . 

 He calls these people ^StcraSe?, adding the descriptive expressions — 

 avOpoiTrdpia, KoXofta, [xeyaXoKecjiaXa. The skull of a female, twenty- 

 eight years of age, was some time since sent to England. Mr.. 

 Busk had an opportunity of examining it, and stated that it was the 

 smallest adult skull he had ever measured. If this skull was a fair 

 specimen, the crania of the Veddahs must be less than those of the 

 Australian, the Esquimaux, or the Negro. 



There are several other points on which Tennent and Bailey are 

 at variance. Eor instance, the former asserts that the Veddahs kill 

 birds by the bow and arrow, and afterwards eat them. Bailey says 

 they are too poor in ability as marksmen to strike a bird, and that 

 they will not eat the flesh of oxen, elephants, bears, leopards, jackals 

 or birds. He certainly acknowledges that they capture birds, with 

 bird-lime, but for what purpose is not, I think, stated. He denies 

 the correctness also of Tennent's statement that the Veddahs oeca- 



