52 



ANTHROPOLOGY. 



that country, the vicuna can, Hke the llama, be tamed and 

 domesticated, flocks may be colle6led to open a new specula- 

 tion to the cultivator, and to afford the prospedl of great com- 

 mercial benefits to the community. 



ANTHROPOLOGY. 



ACCOUNT OP TWO PERUVIAN GIAKTS. 



Giants and dv/arfs are antipodal nations, the existence 

 of which is still problematical to philosophers and naturalists. 

 The enormous bulk which several voyagers have ascribed to 

 the Patagonians, is as much doubted as the diminutive stature 

 of the Indians who inhabit the mountains of Madagascar. On 

 a survey of the different parts of the globe, it will be found 

 that South America is the country which affords the greatest 

 number of testimonies in favour of the former. The histories 

 which ancient traditions have handed down, relate that, in 

 the primitive ages, a certain race of men, who, from the knee 

 downward, measured as much in length as a man of the high- 

 est stature measures in his whole body, landed at the point of 

 St. Helena. The sepulchres discovered on the coasts of Peru, 

 and those of the provinces of Chichas and Tarija, bestow 

 some colour of probability on these narrations. In the ca- 

 binet of natural history now forming at Lima*, is deposited 

 a tooth (one of the molares, or grinders) of a mummy dis- 



* In the year 1792. 



covered 



