THE HUMAN SPECIES. 187 



generally liffused, and bear evidence of greater antiquity, 

 wherever hey are located. In some instances supplying, by 

 ingenuity, the want of superior strength, they appear poss 

 of a certain progress in civilization greater than the conquer- 

 ing 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 obtained in the Caucasian or even Mon- 

 golic stocks, to which they appear directly <>r 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 polytheistica] charac- 

 ter, but bearing evidence of systematic organization. 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 Balak- 

 hilyas and Dwarapulas; 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, Lap- 

 landers, 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 present Basques; all attesting a similar 

 dualism of fancy and fact, as was shown to exist in the Giants. 

 They bear, however, beside their diminished stature, one com- 

 mon character in physical history ; namely, that all the races, 

 where by superabundant intermixture the distinctive marks are 

 not effaced, are swarthy, with black hair and black eyes, grow- 

 ing still darker in southern latitudes, till at length they become 

 positively black, and the hair assumes a woolly character. 

 Still, among these, some may be seen of ordinary stature, and 

 others are stunted by habitual want of food. In this shape 

 they are, in Asia, recorded to have existed under various 



