182 NATURAL HISTORY OP 



and value according to their true importance, if so be, that ihj 

 solution can thereby be effected, and bearing in mind how cir- 

 cumscribed is our knowledge of the exceptional laws of nature. 



Without, therefore, coming to a peremptory conclusion in 

 the present state of our knowledge, and having stated, so far 

 as space and our means permitted, the principal conditions of 

 the questions at issue, — questions which are, after all, 

 in a great measure speculative, and whereof the result can 

 in no shape have weight, where the moral obligations of Man 

 regard his intercourse with fellow-men, — let us now proceed, 

 first, to take a view of extinct abnormal races of our species ; 

 and then, after noticing generalities, offer a somewhat detailed 

 account of the three great typical forms which constitute the 

 human family. 



ABNORMAL RACES OF MAN. 



GIANTS AND DWARFS. 



There were, in early antiquity, nations, tribes, and families, 

 existing in nearly every part of the earth, whose origin and 

 affinities appear so exceedingly obscure, that they have been 

 transferred from physical realities to poetical mythology ; and, 

 under the names of Titans, iEooras, Hastikarnas, Danaras, 

 Gins, Deeves, Thyrsen, Dwarfs, Swergi, Elves, and Fairies, 

 regarded as personifications of phenomena in nature, although 

 the inverse may be assumed with more probabdity, taking the 

 pretended creations of mere fancy to be, in their origin, derived 

 from physical realities more or less distorted. Such are the 

 Giant and Dwarf races of mythology, romance, and history, 



