THE PIGMIES. 99 



Peninsulas, the true Pigmies have exercised a certain ethnological 

 influence by inter-breeding with the superior races and in thus 

 creating half-bred populations. Almost everywhere, also, they are 

 still represented by groups offering different degrees of purity. 



On the whole, the ancients had gathered information more 

 or less inexact and incomplete, but at the same time more or less 

 true, of three dwarf races which they called Pigmies. One 

 of them was situated in Asia, in the south-eastern extremity ; the 

 second in the south, near the source of the Nile ; the third, in 

 Africa also, on the extreme south-western limits of the known 

 world. These three groups have been discovered again now-a-days, 

 nearly in the same direction, but at a greater distance from 

 Greece and Rome than is admitted by tradition. 



They are, however, but fractions of two well denned groups 

 occupying — one in Asia, the other in Africa — a considerable area, 

 and comprising distinct tribes, populations, and even sub-races. 



From the very first years of my professorship at the Museum, 

 I proposed to unite all the black populations of Asia, Melanesia, 

 and Malay regions, characterised by their small stature or the 

 relative slightness of their limbs, into one Negrito branch, ( x ) in 

 opposition to the Papuan branch, in which I placed the oriental 

 negroes remarkable for their height and sometimes athletic 

 proportions. I have every reason to believe that, under one 

 form or another, this division is generally adopted. 



On his side, M. Hamy has shown, in a former account, that, 

 contrary to the universally adopted idea, there exist in Africa 

 certain negroes who differ from the classical type in a smaller 

 size of the skull. ( 2 ) 



Pursuing this order of research, he discovered that this 

 cephalic characteristic corresponded with a very perceptible 



(1) I have thus applied to the whole race the name of the little negroes 

 of the Philippines, also called Aetas. 



(2) Cows d' 'Anthropologic da Museum ; Neyres Asiatiques et Mblanesiens — 

 Lectures which were written out by M. Jacquart, Assistant Naturalist — 

 Gazette Medlcale de Paris, 1862. In these lectures, I summed up what I had 

 already said on the subject, during the preceding year. I had professed the 

 same opinion and established this division in anterior lectures. 



