be
traced to any insufficiency of nutrition in the smaller kind.

It is evident that difference of size in animals has some deep-lying
cause, which is not merely the greater or less abundance of food.
Numerous specimens of a perfectly well-formed elephant, closely allied
in structure to the Indian elephant, but only 3 ft. high, are found
fossil in Malta and the neighbouring Mediterranean region, and in
Liberia a species of hippopotamus, distinct from that of other African
regions, is common, which is not bigger than a common pig. Pygmy hogs,
pygmy deer, pygmy buffaloes (and many other pygmy animals) are known
as thriving wild species, so that it seems clear that there are other
causes at work than semi-starvation in the production of pygmy races.

A second suggestion which is sometimes made is that the smaller race,
or smaller species of two allied forms, is the original one, and that
the larger forms have developed from these and established themselves,
without completely destroying the smaller original race. This view has
at various times been favoured in regard to the pygmy race of man.
There is something plausible in the view that these little men are
nearer than normal mankind are to the monkeys, and the fur-like
hairiness of their skin has been cited in support of it; but a fatal
objection is that the men of the pure pygmy race of Africa and Asia
are really not more, but less, monkey-like than many full-sized
savages. They have heads and faces nearer in shape to those of
Europeans than have the Australians, the Tasmanians, and the negroes.
They are more intelligent, shrewd, and skilful than their full-sized
neighbours. It is quite possible that they are a very ancient
race--more ancient, in their isolation and freedom from complicated
customs, habits, and mode of life than other savages--but they are not
primitive in the sense of being ape-like in structure or in want of
mental capacity.

A third possibility in regard to the pygmy people is that they have
been "selected" by natural conditions which favoured the survival of
small individuals, and thus established a small race--just as man has
established small races of horses, dogs, cattle, or what not, by
continually selecting small individuals for breeding, until he has
produced such races as the Shetland pony, the toy terrier, and the
Kerry cow. It is necessary to discover or to suggest (if this
explanation is to be accepted) what precisely is the advantage,