in the Muckle Heog of
the Island of Unst, one of the Shetlands, together with stone vessels,
human interments of persons of considerable stature and of great muscular
strength. Speaking of the Keiss skeletons, Professor Huxley says that the
males are, the one somewhat above, and the other probably about the
average stature; while the females are short, none exceeding five feet two
inches or three inches in height.[A] And Dr. Garson, treating of the
osteology of the ancient inhabitants of the Orkneys, says that the female
skeleton which he examined was about five feet two inches in height, i.e.,
about the mean height of the existing races of England.[B] There is no
evidence that Lapps and Eskimo ever visited these parts of the world; and
if they did, as we have seen, their stature, though stunted, cannot fairly
be described as pigmy. Even if we grant that the stature of the early
races did not average more than five feet two inches, which, by the way,
was the height of the great Napoleon, it is more than doubtful whether it
fell so far short of that of succeeding races as to cause us to imagine
that it gave rise to tales about a race of dwarfs.

[Footnote A: Laing, _Prehistoric Remains of Caithness_, p. 101.]

[Footnote B: _Journ. Anthrop. Inst._, xiii. 60.]

(2.) The mounds with which the tales of little people are associated have
not, in many cases, been habitations, but were natural or sepulchral in
their nature. It may, of course, be argued that the story having once
arisen in connection with one kind of mound, may, by a process easy to
understand, have been transferred to other hillocks similar in appearance,
though diverse in nature. It is difficult to see, however, how this could
have occurred in Yorkshire and other parts of England, where it is not
argued that the stunted inhabitants of the North ever penetrated. It is
still more difficult to explain how similar legends can have originated in
America in connection with mounds, since there never were Pigmy races in
that continent.

(3.) The rude and simple arrangements of the interior of these mound
dwellings might have, in the process of time, become altered into the
gorgeous halls, decked with gold and silver and precious stones, as we
find them in the stories; they might even, though this is much more
difficult to understand, have become possessed of the capacity for being
raised upon red pillars. But there is one pitch to which, I think, they
could never h