r bedaub their bodies (though the
Andamanese indulge in a kind of "tattooing"). Among them the struggle
for life does not exist in its more brutal forms. They take care of
the sick and feeble, the children, and the old people. Cannibalism is
unknown amongst them; they punish murder and theft. They are honest,
and, moreover, are monogamous, and punish adultery, which is rare
among them. Their religion is remarkably simple. It is limited to
reverence for a Supreme Being, without any offering of sacrifice, and
they do not worship ancestors nor exhibit the superstitions known as
"animism." It has been argued that these characteristics, taken
together, indicate a primitive condition of humanity. On the other
hand, many writers regard them as degenerate offshoots of negro-like
races of larger stature and more complicated mental development.

There is no name by which the whole series of these small-sized people
is indicated excepting the ancient designation of "pygmies." Many
careful students of human races separate the pygmies of Africa as
"negrilloes" from the pygmies of Asia, whom they designate
"negritoes," and it is held that the negrilloes (Congo pygmies and
bushmen) hold the same relation to African negroes and Zulus as the
negritoes (Andamanese, and scattered tribes in New Guinea, the
Philippines, Formosa and the Solomon Islands, as well as in Malacca
and Annam and in the north-west and in other parts of Hindustan) hold
to the full-sized, frizzly haired Papuans. This, no doubt, is a
convenient way of stating the case, but the important fact remains
that the pygmies of purest race, both of Africa and Asia, have the
remarkable characteristics in common which we have noted above. Their
bodily and mental peculiarities certainly suggest, whether the
suggestion can be verified or not, the former existence in the
tropical regions of Africa and Asia of a widely spread pygmy race of
uniform character, a race which has been, to a large extent, destroyed
by other races of larger and more powerful individuals, but has also
in many regions (especially on the Asiatic Continent) intermarried
with the surrounding larger people, and given rise to hybrid races. At
the same time, it seems that in other regions this race has, by
isolation in forests and mountain ranges and by the exercise of
special skill in the use of poisoned arrows and in the arts of
concealment, evasion, and terrorising, succeeded in maintaining its
existence and pr