CHAPTER XIV

[7]"Science from an Easy Chair," Methuen & Co., 1910.

PRIMITIVE BELIEFS ABOUT FATHERLESS PROGENY

In the preceding chapter I related the curious and exceptional cases of "fatherless reproduction" by means of true egg-cells, those cells of special nature produced in the organs called "ovaries," present in all but the simplest animals and plants. These egg-cells are usually, with elaborate sureness and precise mechanism after liberation from the ovary, fertilised by (that is to say, fused with) the complemental reproductive cells—the sperm-filaments—produced by other individuals, the males.

But we must not forget—and, indeed, one should not enter on the consideration of this subject without a knowledge of the fact—that vast numbers of animals and plants reproduce themselves "asexually," as it is termed, namely, by breaking-off or separating buds, branches, or other good solid bits of their structure which, when thus separated, are capable of individual life and growth. Thus plants very largely multiply, using this method in addition to the sexual method of egg-cells and sperm-cells. One may take "cuttings" from plants and rear them, and plants also "cut" or detach such bits themselves, in the form of runners, of dividing bulbs, of bulbules, and such reproductive growths seen on the lily, on the viviparous, alpine grass, and many other plants. Even a bit cut off from the leaf of a plant (for instance, a begonia) will sprout, root itself, and grow into a completely formed and healthy individual. Animals, too, such as polyps or zoophytes, and many beautiful and elaborate worms, multiply by "fission," dividing into two or more parts, each of which becomes a complete animal. This process is not seen in any fish,amphibian, reptile, bird, or mammal, nor in molluscs, nor in insects, crustaceans, myriapods, and arachnids (spiders and scorpions). It is almost wholly confined to lower animals (worms and polyps) and to plants, and hence is often called "vegetative reproduction." The most remarkable case of its appearance among higher forms is that of the marine Ascidians, or tunicates—close allies of the true vertebrates—where reproduction by budding and the formation of wonderfully elaborate star-like forms produced by budding and the cohesion of the budded individuals as one composite individual are well known. Their beautiful shapes and colours have been reproduced in hundreds of exquisite pictures by our great artist-naturalists. We thus have to recognise that there are two distinct kinds of reproduction in living things. One is "asexual," by means of division or separation of large or special masses of their existence, made up of ordinary tissue cells. Co-existing with this, often in the same individuals, is the other method, the "sexual," by means of detached egg-cells and sperm-cells which are thrown off from the parents, and do not (except in rare instances) proceed to develop unless the egg-cell is "fertilised" by the fusion with it of a sperm-cell.

The whole subject of the reproduction of animals and plants was, until the introduction of the microscope, involved in obscurity and mystery. The Greeks and Romans had necessarily very imperfect and erroneous notions on the subject, and it was not until 300 years ago that William Harvey, the discoverer of the circulation of the blood, declared, as a general law, that every living thing is born from an egg. During that 300 years his conclusion has been examined and modified, corrected and expanded, and the microscope has at last enabled us to see and follow the excessively minute particles and structures by which sexual reproduction is effected. Harvey's dictum was a step in advance when it was made, for previously the belief was current that living things were "bred" in all sorts of queer ways. It was supposed that the putrefying flesh of a dead animal actually was converted by a sudden process into maggots,and that rotten wood would breed, out of its own substance, ships' barnacles and even young geese and mice—an opinion contested only 200 years ago by Sir Thomas Browne! No difficulty was felt in admitting that whole swarms of insects, fishes, and even herds of larger beasts were spontaneously generated from mud, from putrid matter, or from the waters of the sea. That, indeed, was the popular notion set forth by the poet, John Milton, as to the mode in which living things were "miraculously" brought into existence at the beginning of things by the "fiat" of the Creator. What more probable than that such a creation should still be, here and there, at work? However, not three centuries ago, actual experiment gradually convinced the learned that maggots are bred in a dead body only from the eggs laid by parent flies, as shown by the Italian Redi in 1668 who found that no maggots were bred when he simply excluded the flies from access to the dead body by covering it with wire gauze, but that the blow-flies swarmed on the gauze and vainly laid their eggs on it! It was only gradually recognised that birth by means of eggs or germs extruded from parental organisms of the same history and character as their offspring is the explanation of all such swarms of flies, worms, and even mushrooms and moulds as had been formerly ascribed to a mysterious power of breeding these organisms possessed by inanimate dirt and refuse.

In spite of this progress in knowledge the belief in "spontaneous generation" of such excessively minute organisms as the bacteria and yeasts was general until Theodore Schwann in 1836 performed with them just the same experiment as Redi had performed with blow-flies in 1668. He showed that if a putrescible liquid (for instance, soup) were boiled in a retort so as to destroy all germs, and then the open neck of the retort was kept heated in a flame, so that no floating germs could enter alive, the soup did not putrefy, and no bacteria or other organisms appeared in it. The old notions, nevertheless, survive to this day. Peasants, fisher-folk, and even uneducated wealthy countrymen cling to them with the confidence arising from profound ignorance. Andoccasionally a man of some scientific training and knowledge astonishes the world by a futile attempt to show that the old fancies were true in regard, at any rate, to the lowest microscopic forms of life. But these are but the echoes of the past; we do not believe nowadays in "spontaneous generation," nor in sudden transformations of lower into higher forms of life. The doctrine, "omne vivum e vivo"—every living thing (in the present condition of our earth) is born from a living thing—is now held by scientific investigators as a reasonable generalisation of experience.

On the other hand, Harvey's dictum, "Every living thing comes from an egg," is only true in a limited sense, namely, that whilst the individual among most larger animals and plants is always traceable to an egg-cell detached from a parental individual of a like kind of species, there are whole groups and series of lower animals and most plants in which the individual born or "developed" from an egg-cell does not proceed when grown to full size to reproduce in turn by eggs and fertilising sperms, but divides into two or more individuals or gives off detached buds or reproductive bulbs, which become separate individuals, and only after these and several successive generations of individuals have been thus produced "asexually," by fission or by budding, does a generation appear which produces true egg-cells and sperm-cells and reproduces by their means. Thus it is true that the individuals "budded off" or separated by fission from an asexual parent can be ultimately traced through one or more generations of previous asexual parents to an egg-cell produced and fertilised in the regular way, and with this important modification Harvey's dictum is justified. These facts and the wonderful histories of the animals and plants in which egg-and-sperm-producing generations "alternate" with generations which multiply by fission and budding have only been worked out in detail and by the aid of the microscope during the great century of scientific discovery which lies just behind us. Often the two generations, reproducing, the one by fission, the other by egg and sperm-cells, are alike in appearance, butoften they are very different, and have naturally been supposed at first to have nothing to do with each other.

Thus some of the little "coralline polyps" and other most beautiful little marine flower-like polyps attached to rocks, weeds, and shells in the sea reproduce by budding and division. But after a period of such growth and such budding they produce on their stalks—jelly-fish! These jelly-fish are budded and thrown off by them, as glass-like swimming bells, which lead an independent life, seize prey, nourish themselves, and grow to a size varying from that of a sixpence to that of a cart-wheel. These "bells" are commonly known as "jelly-fish." They discharge thousands of egg-cells into the sea and fertilise them with sperms! From those fertilised eggs grow young polyps, which fix themselves to rocks or weeds, and grow up to bud and multiply by fission, and eventually to produce again by fission a generation of jelly-fishes! Such a marvellous history of alternating modes of reproduction has been discovered, and described in greatest microscopic detail and with most ample pictorial representations of all the minutest structures of the organisms studied, not only in many marine polyps, but also in the case of many parasitic worms, such as the tape worms and the liver-flukes. Some of the most fascinating cases, on account of the beauty of the little creatures concerned, are found amongst the surface-swimming Ascidians of the sea—the glass-like Salps. But our common ferns and mosses also show this same alternation of sexual and sexless generations, the two generations differing greatly in size, form, and structure from one another, whilst the whole story of "flowers" and their structure is bound up with a wonderful "telescoping" or rolling of the two generations (sexless and sexual) into one plant!

It was not until long after Harvey's time that these things were understood, and there was every excuse—in the absence of observation of the facts, especially those yet to be revealed by the microscope—for the erroneous suppositions and explanations which were formerly entertained as to the mode of reproduction of the lessfamiliar plants and animals. If we go back to the starting-point of European science, to the great Aristotle, we find that he had formed singularly correct conclusions as to the reproduction of the larger kinds of animals, though he knew nothing about "sperms," having no microscope, and only regarded the fluid produced by male animals as exercising a fertilising effect on the eggs, which in many instances are large enough for anyone to see. But, of course, he could not have any knowledge of the egg-cell, nor does he say anything about the reproduction of plants. Later, however, the sexuality of flowering plants was taught by his pupils, and at the time of the Roman Empire there was a very definite belief among learned men (such as Pliny) that the larger plants and animals reproduce by eggs or by seeds produced by the females which require to be "fertilised" by a product formed in the males—the spermatic fluid in the case of animals and by the pollen in the case of a few flowering plants (e.g.the date-palm). But there was no idea of holding this as a general and universal law. From Pliny to Harvey and later, those who concerned themselves with natural history accepted without difficulty any strange accounts or appearances as to the reproduction or the sudden production in fanciful and astonishing ways of the lower and smaller animals and plants. They did not expect these inferior creatures to have the same methods of reproduction as the higher and bigger creatures. It is only now, since the later years of the nineteenth century, that we are able to show that all animals and plants, even the minutest microscopic kinds, reproduce by the formation and separation of egg-cells, and that these egg-cells are (in all but a few exceptional cases) fertilised by sperm cells, which are smaller than the egg-cells, and usually provided with active swimming filaments.

Not only did our mediæval ancestors believe all sorts of fancies as to the propagation of lower animals and plants, but they were quite prepared to accept stories as to reproduction in the case of higher animals, and even in mankind, by irregular methods, such as parthenogenesis, or the defect of an ordinary male parent. In the MiddleAges in Europe, and earlier in the East, the belief in the frequent occurrence of the birth of a child which had no human male parent was common. It was, so to speak, an admitted though irregular occurrence. A very curious thing is that when such cases were supposed to occur, they were not ascribed to any natural process such as we now recognise in the "parthenogenesis" of insects and crustaceans, but to the visitation of the mother by a spirit—a floating, volatile demon or angel (known as an "incubus" in the Middle Ages) beneficent or malicious as the case might be. Stories of the nocturnal visits of these mysterious ghostly "incubi" are on record in great number and variety, both in European and Oriental tradition and legend. There seems to have been a readiness to believe the theory of paternity from among the hidden world of goblins, fairies, and sprites which was very naturally made use of by a woman and her relatives when she could not produce the father of her child.

We come across examples of such beliefs in invisible agents of paternity even among the more cultivated Romans. Thus Virgil in his "Georgics" cites as a fact that mares are fertilised by the wind. His words are given on the next page.

It is now known that, quite apart from any motive of concealment of the true paternity of their offspring, some of the native tribes of Australia have the belief that, as the regular and normal thing, children are begotten by strange fairy-like spirits which haunt the rocks and trees of certain localities and enter the future mother as she passes by these haunted rocks and trees. These Australian "black fellows" hold that the human father counts for nothing in the matter. The belief of these Australian savages is referred to by writers on the subject (Mr. Andrew Lang and others) as "the spiritual theory of conception." There are some reasons for thinking that this curious theory and the accompanying ignorance as to the natural causes of conception were widely spread among primeval men. The fact that most trees are fertilised by the wind (which carries to their female flowers the invisible powder, or pollen, of the maleflowers, conveyed in the case of smaller plants which have gay-coloured flowers by bees and butterflies) may have been noticed by primitive man, and have started the belief that there are fertilising spirits or demons in the air. However the fancy arose, it is only a parallel to the strange fancies as to spontaneous generation of all sorts of animals and plants current 200 years ago among civilised men. And, further, it is worth noting that the uncanny belief in the "incubus" which was generally prevalent in the Middle Ages may possibly be considered as a survival in (or incursion into) Europe of the primitive spiritual theory of all human conception, and of the fertilising activity of the haunting spirits of the air which was held by primeval man, and is still found in full force among the Arunta tribes of Australia.

"Ore omnes versæ in Zephyrum stant rupibus altisExceptantque leves auras et sæpe sine ullisConjugiis vento gravidæ, mirabile dictu."Georgiciii. 275.(Facing the west on lofty rocksAll stand and sniff the buoyant breezeAnd often—marvellous to tell—Without conjunction with a sire,Bear young engendered by the wind.)

"Ore omnes versæ in Zephyrum stant rupibus altisExceptantque leves auras et sæpe sine ullisConjugiis vento gravidæ, mirabile dictu."

Georgiciii. 275.

(Facing the west on lofty rocksAll stand and sniff the buoyant breezeAnd often—marvellous to tell—Without conjunction with a sire,Bear young engendered by the wind.)

THE PYGMY RACES OF MEN

The tradition of the existence of dwarfs, not as isolated examples, but as a race with their own customs, government, and language is familiar among civilised people, and exists among scattered and remote savages. We have all heard of them in that treasury of primitive beliefs—the nursery. Therefore, the fact that there are at this moment in various parts of the world dwarf or pygmy tribes of men, living in proximity to but apart from those races which have a stature identical with our own, has a great fascination and interest. Some few races of men have an average height of an inch, or thereabouts, greater than that of the people of the British Islands, whilst some are shorter by as much as two or three inches. But, on the whole, it may be said that, putting aside the pygmy races, of which I am about to write, mankind generally does not show a very striking range of normal stature—the mass in any race or region of the globe varying from 5 ft. 4 in. to 5 ft. 8 in., and tending to the higher rather than the lower figure.

The pygmy races are sharply separated from normal mankind by as much as a foot, and even more, in average stature, ranging from 4 ft. to something less than 4 ft. 11 in. in height. They are, enumerating them in the order of their purity of race and completeness of their isolation: (1) The Mincopies, or Andaman Islanders; (2) the Congo pygmies (comprising the tribes known as the Akkas, or Tiki-Tikis, the Bambutis, the Watwas, the Obongos, and Bayagas); (3) the bushmen of South Africa; (4) the Aetas of the Philippine Islands; (5) the Samangs of Malacca, and very similar isolated pygmy tribes which have been observed in New Guinea, and alsoin the Solomon Islands and in Formosa. The Veddas of Ceylon, the Senois of Malacca, and the Toalas of Celebes are apparently races which have resulted from the "crossing" of true pygmies with other normal-statured races inhabiting the islands in which they are found. The Brahouis of Beloochistan and the "monkey-men," or Bandra-Loks, east of the Indus, appear also to belong to the pygmy race.

Next to their agreement in small size, the most interesting facts about the pygmies we have just enumerated is that, notwithstanding the wide area over which they are found in scattered, isolated communities—viz. from the Congo to South Africa on the one hand, and, on the other hand, from Central Africa to the Indian Ocean, and on to New Guinea, the Philippine Islands, and Formosa—yet they all have short, round skulls of full average brain capacity, and have their hair growing in tightly curled-up peppercorn-like tufts—two characters found combined in no other race. They usually have finely-developed, straight foreheads, and the jaws do not project strongly; the lips are usually fine and thin, and the nose, though very broad, is not always greatly flattened. They are well-shaped, well-proportioned little people, neither grotesque nor deformed. To a great extent their corporeal features suggest an infantile or child-like stage of development, and the same is true of their intellectual condition and of their productions. Their habitations are very primitive, either caves or low clay-made huts, of the shape of half an egg. They do not make pottery, and neither keep herds nor till the ground, contenting themselves with such food as wild fruits and roots and the animals they kill with spear or arrow or capture in traps. They do not mutilate or 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 primitive independence dating from remote prehistoric times.

Whether we regard the pygmies as one race or as the result of local modification of larger races, it is noteworthythat they are of lighter tint than the black races close to or among whom they live. Some, both of the African and Asiatic pygmies, are very dark brown—practically black—but many are of a paler and yellowish tint. We must not forget that the babies and quite young children of negroes are nearly "white." The Asiatic pygmies, notably the Andamanese, are darker than their African fellows. It must necessarily be difficult in studying such a race to make due allowance not merely for admixture of blood from surrounding populations, but to estimate correctly what the little people have learnt in the way of art and habit from their neighbours and what is their own. The Andaman Islanders, though provided with metal by trading, still use the sharp-edged splinters of volcanic glass-stone to shave their heads, which they keep entirely bald!

It is one of the merits of the showman's enterprise in modern times that he brings to a great city like London groups of interesting savages, without imposture and without ill-treatment, and enables us to see and talk with them almost as though we had travelled to their remote native forests. It would certainly be a successful and worthy enterprise on the part of the Anthropological Society of London to start a garden and houses such as those maintained by the Zoological Society, but arranged so as to receive some five or six groups of interesting "savages." The society would be responsible for careful and humane treatment of their guests, and return them after a sojourn, say, of a couple years, to their native country and replace them by specimens of other races. Under the auspices of showmen I have seen Zulu Kaffirs, Guiana Indians, North American Indians, Kalmuck Tartars, South African bushmen, and Congo pygmies in London, besides many hundreds of African negroes of various tribes. Farini's bushmen and Harrison's Congo pygmies were perfect samples of the dwarf race about which I am writing. But I also saw and examined carefully, in 1872, at Naples, with my friend Professor Panceri, the two African pygmies, Tebo and Chairallah, who were the first to reach Europe. Theywere subsequently adopted by and lived for some years under the care of Count Miniscalchi Erizzo. They were very intelligent, and learnt to read and to write well, and to play difficult music on the piano, with feeling and appreciation. We were especially concerned to determine by the stage of growth of their teeth and other indications whether they were merely ordinary young negroes, as some anthropologists supposed, or really representatives of the dwarf race as asserted by the traveller Miani, who bought them, in exchange for a dog and a calf, in the country of the Mombootoos, south of the Welle River, and west of the Albert Nyanza. They were still young and growing when we examined them, but Tebo ceased growth when he had reached a stature of 4 ft. 8 in. We had no difficulty in coming to the conclusion that they were, when we saw them, really of exceptionally small stature for their age as indicated by the teeth which were in place in their jaws.

Fig. 23.—Copy of a figure from a group drawn on a Greek vase (dating from 300b.c.), representing a number of the pygmies of the remote Upper Nile engaged in battle. The resemblance of the peaked cap and of the beard to those of the little figures carved by Black Forest peasants and intended to represent the mythical "gnomes" or dwarf mining-elves is noteworthy. (From Saglio and Derenberg's "Dictionnaire des Antiquités Grecs et Romaines.")

The Akkas living near the sources of the Nile were known to the ancient Egyptians, and were the foundationof stories and fabulous exaggerations among the ancient Greeks. Even before Homer these stories existed, and the little people were called "pygmies," which means "of the length of the forearm" (Greek, pugmé). Homer refers to the wars of these pygmies with the cranes, and as a matter of fact the African pygmies do wage a kind of war upon the great cranes which swarm in the marsh-land of their country. Naturally enough the really small size of the African pygmies (they are about 4 ft. in height, some two or three inches less, some as much as eight inches more) was exaggerated by report and tradition, just as the really big eggs of the great extinct ostrich-like bird of Madagascar were represented in the story of Sindbad, in the "Arabian Nights," as being as large as the dome of a temple, and the bird large in proportion. The Egyptians, as we have seen, knew the pygmy Akkas, and Egyptian fact was ever the romance of the Greeks.

Herodotus mentions the African pygmies from beyond the Libyan desert, citing, as is his wont, the accounts of certain travellers with whom he had conversed, and a later Greek writer tells of a pygmy race in India, a statement which our present knowledge confirms. It is a curious fact that Swift's Lilliputians are thus traceable to the Central African dwarf race, for Greek legend related that Hercules visited the country of the pygmies, where on waking from sleep he found one division of the army guarding his right leg, another his left, and others his arms. Hercules got up, swept them all into the lion's skin which he used as a cloak, and went on his way, shaking out his small tormentors from their prison as though they were so many ants. It seems fairly certain that Swift derived the initial scene in his story of Gulliver's adventures among the Lilliputians from this legend.

Miani's pygmies were members of a tribe discovered by the distinguished traveller Schweinfurth, who, in 1870, was the first to visit the country of the Niam-Niam, to the west of the sources of the Nile, and had the honour of showing that the myths of the ancient Greeks as to a nation of pygmies were based on fact, and that thedefinite words of Aristotle as to the existence of these pygmy people on the upper reaches of the Nile were correct. Schweinfurth found to the south of the Niam-Niam country a tribe of full-statured negroes called the Mombootoos, whose chief, Moonza, kept close to the Royal residence a colony of pygmies who were called in that country by the name "Akkas." Schweinfurth ascertained that they are spread to the number of many thousands along the borders of the great Congo forest and form numerous tribes. They are very generally well treated by their more powerful neighbours, as by Moonza. Partly from fear of their poisoned arrows and their crafty methods of attack and subsequent disappearance into the forest, partly on account of a superstitious dread of them, the Congo pygmies are not only tolerated, but protected, by the larger people. They alone are at home in the steaming darkness of the immeasurable forest into which no other natives dare to enter.

It is a remarkable fact that the Egyptologist Mariette had, before these discoveries, found on an ancient Egyptian monument the portrait of a dwarf inscribed with the word "akka"—the identical name by which they are known at this day in the region where Schweinfurth found them.

Public interest in the pygmy race was rearoused three years ago by the announcement that the party of English naturalists at that time exploring the interior of New Guinea had come across a tribe of these little people in the mountains of that island. The existence of these pygmies in New Guinea was already well known, but fuller accounts of them will be valuable. The Italian traveller Beccari, in 1876, speaks of them as "Karonis," and states that they occupy a chain of mountains parallel to the north coast of the north-west peninsular of the island. D'Albertis, Lawes, and other travellers have seen and described individuals of the pygmy race of the mountains of New Guinea. It is interesting to find that they are described as having the body covered with fine, woolly hair, a feature which is recorded by Schweinfurth, by Stanley, and by an ancient Greek writer, in regard to the Congo pygmies of Africa, and led in formertimes to the notion that the old traditions and accounts of African pygmies referred, not to human beings, but to chimpanzees!

The Laplanders are the only very small-sized people in Europe, but they run from 5 ft. upwards, whereas the negrites and negrillos run from about 4 ft. to less than 5 ft. The Lapps (of whom there are about 25,000 in Finmark and Lapmark) are a thick-set, round-headed (brachycephalic), dark-yellow race, and have always been credited with powers of witchcraft and magic by their neighbours and by modern sailors. They live in immediate contact with the Finns (both are Mongolian races), who are very tall and have fair hair and blue eyes. Some writers have supposed that the Lapps are the remnants of a small race which was formerly spread over the whole of Europe, and was exterminated or driven out by the larger races. But we have no evidence in favour of this view and strong evidence against it, since we now know the skulls and skeletons of a great number of the prehistoric inhabitants of Europe belonging to the Bronze, to the Neolithic, and to the Palæolithic periods. None of these skeletons belong to an abnormally small-sized race, though the Bronze-age people were smaller than their predecessors and successors. The cave-dwellers of the "reindeer" epoch of the Palæolithic period were big men, with fine, high skulls, and even the earlier Palæolithic men of the glacial period, the man of the Neanderthal, the couple from Spy, and the three recently dug up near Perigueux (of whom I have written in another book),[8]were not diminutive men. It is true they were not tall—only about 5 ft. 4 in. in height—but they were very powerful and muscular, and totally different physically from the Lapps or from any of the tropical pygmy men. It is a remarkable fact that in one cave at Mentone, on the Riviera, explored by the Prince of Monaco, two skeletons have been found belonging to a shortish negro-like race (indicated by the form of the skull), and apparently a little later in date than the Neandermen. We must remember that at that remote date there was continuousland connection between Europe and Africa. There is, in fact, no reason to suppose that a pygmy race ever existed in Europe, though, of course, individuals of exceptionally small stature are often produced, and in some regions the whole population is shorter than it is in others.

A very interesting question in connection with the origin and significance of pygmy races of men is, "Why is any race smaller in size than another?" Every species among the higher animals has its standard size from which only in the rarest cases are there departures. That in itself is a curious fact. How was the standard size determined, and how is it maintained? The whole question lies there. At first sight it seems to many people quite simple to account for "pygmies"; they will tell you that the poor creatures are half-starved and so unable to grow to full size. That explanation does not, however, meet the case, for the African and Asiatic pygmy races are just as well nourished as most of their neighbours. Also if we look a little further we find that the women of every race are smaller than the men, and often much smaller. That is not because they are ill-nourished as compared with the men. And, again, we find very closely similar species of animals existing side by side, one a large species and the other a small one, having the same opportunities of obtaining regular nourishment. There are many instances, but take for example the beautiful Great Koodoo antelope of Africa, with its fine spiral horns, which measures 5 ft. at the shoulder, and the Little Koodoo, a complete miniature of it existing alongside of it, and standing only 3 ft. 5 in. at the shoulder. Take the two common white butterflies of this country, the Large White and the Small White, also the Large Tortoiseshell butterfly and the small. Take the instance of many plant genera of which larger and smaller species are found growing side by side. The difference in size in these cases cannot be traced to any insufficiency of nutrition in the smaller kind.

It is evident that difference of size in animals hassome 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, in a state of nature, to a small-sized race in being of small size. The guess is made that the small people can more easily hide, whether in forest or among the rocks and caves of mountainous regions, from aggressive larger-sized mankind. The objection to this view is that though it may explain the present habits and dwelling-places of some of the pygmy race, it is not capable of explaining their first segregation and formation as a distinct race. Another general advantage which small animals have over larger ones of the same species is that if the food of the species is widely distributed but limited in amount, a hundred individuals weighing 5 st. each will secure more of it than fifty individuals weighing 10 st. each. The total weight of individuals is the same, but the smaller series will cover twice the area and have twice as much opportunity to secure the limited amount of food, whilst, in proportion to their size, requiring less. It cannot be doubted that, other things being equal, this obvious relation must tend to limit the increase in size of animals which have to search for their special food, and must favour small races.

Some writers have supposed that small limited areas, such as small islands, favour the production of small races by some mysterious law of appropriateness similar to that which lays down that "who drives fat oxen should himself be fat." The pygmy buffalo of the island of Celebes, the Anoa, is cited as an instance, and the pygmy men of the Andaman Islands as another. But there are plenty of facts which would lead to an exactly opposite conclusion. Gigantic tortoises are found in the Galapagos Islands and in the minute islands of the Indian Ocean, and never on the big continents. Gigantic birds bigger than ostriches abounded in the islands of New Zealand and Madagascar. Some of the tallest races of men are found in the Pacific islands, whilst the tallest European population is that of the north of the island called Great Britain. Probably the real relation of islands to the matter is that owing to their isolationand freedom from the general competition of the vast variety of living things in continental areas, they offer unoccupied territory in which either exceptionally small or exceptionally big races may flourish—if once they reach the island shelter, or are by variation produced there—without competitive interference.

An important consideration in regard to the formation and segregation of a human variety or race is that mankind shows a tendency to segregate in groups, like with like. To a large extent this is true also of animals, but in man it acquires a special dominance, owing to the greater activity in him of psychical or mental influences in all his proceedings. The "cagots" of mid-France are the descendants of former leper families. They remain separated from the rest of the population, and do not now know why, nor do their hostile neighbours. Such "outcast" or "accursed" tribes and family groups are found also in Great Britain, and throughout the world. Possibly the "pygmies" owe their preservation to this tendency. Virchow regarded the Lapps as a race produced by disease—a pathological product. It is possible that former liability to disease and present immunity from it is the final explanation of the tropical pygmy race. In the United States black pigs are able to eat, without harm, a common marsh herb, the "Red-root"Lachnanthes tinctoria, which kills other pigs. Hence a black race is established, not because it is black, but because, in it, blackness is "the outward and visible sign of an inward and chemical grace"—that is to say, of a physiological or chemical power of resistance to, and immunity from, the poison of an otherwise nutritious plant. Such "correlations" were described by Darwin, and are of extreme importance and interest—far more so than is, at present, recognised by naturalists. I am inclined to the supposition that the obvious outward signs, the round head, bombous forehead, furry skin, and diminutive size of the pygmies are the outcome of an inward physiological condition peculiar to them, which has enabled them to resist disease or to eat certain kinds of food, or possibly to develop great mental acuteness, and so has led to the establishment of these peculiarsmall people as a race, without their smallness itself having anything to do with their selection and preservation. In that case smallness would be a "by-product," a "correlated" character, not the "effective life-saving" character.

[8]"Science from an Easy Chair," Methuen, 1909.

PREHISTORIC PETTICOATS

After the last great extension of glaciers in Europe, during which nearly all of Great Britain and the North of France and Germany were buried with Scandinavia under one great ice-sheet—and when this ice-sheet had receded, and the climate was like that of the Russian "steppes," cold and dry—there were men inhabiting the caverns on both sides of the Pyrenees. The tract of land which we call "Great Britain" was a part of the Continent of Europe. There was no "English Channel." The Thames and the Rhine opened by a common mouth into the North Sea. The mammoth and the hairy rhinoceros still lingered on in France and the more central regions of Europe. Wild horses, the great ox (Aurochs), the bison, ibex, chamois, were abundant, and the thick-nosed Saiga antelope, now confined to the Russian and Asiatic steppes, was present. The most abundant and important animal immediately north of the Pyrenees was the reindeer. The cave-men of France and Central Europe were a fine race—living by the chase, and fabricating flint knives and scrapers, fine bone spearheads and harpoons, as well as occupying themselves in carving ivory and reindeer antlers, so as to produce highly artistic representations of the animals around them.

They rarely attempted the human face or figure, and when they did were not so successful as in their animal work. They also painted on the walls of some of their caverns, with red and yellow ochre, carbon, and white chalk representations—usually about one-third the size of nature—of some of the most important animals of the chase. They must have used lamps, fed with animal fat, to illuminate the walls, both when they were at work onthe pictures and also afterwards, when they exhibited the finished pictures to the less gifted members of the tribe, as wonderful, even magical appearances. It is uncertain to what extent races of men succeeded one another or were cotemporaries in this period in Europe, but there is good reason for attributing the cave pictures to an early occupation of the caves by men who also carved, in ivory and stone, small figures of women resembling the Hottentot Venus—whilst the later occupants made no such statuettes, but carved in relief on bone or engraved it.

This was probably not less than 50,000 years ago, and may well have been much more. Earlier than the date of these Reindeer men (the Magdalenians, Solutrians and the Aurignacians[9]), in the preceding cold, humid period of the glacial extension (probably from 80,000 to 150,000 years ago) these and other caves were occupied by an inferior race—the Neandermen. They could not carve beasts on ivory nor paint, but could make very good and well "dressed" flint weapons, and could make large fires in and about the caves, both to cook their meat and to keep off the wild beasts (lions, bears, and hyenas), who contended with the strange, low-browed Neandermen for the use of the caves as habitations.

On this side of the Pyrenees the Reindeer men have left some wall-pictures, and new discoveries of great importance in the form of rock carvings of human figures as well as pictures and huge figures of horses, etc., are being made in France as I write these lines. But the best preserved and most numerous wall pictures are those of the cave of Altamira near Santander. These comprise some partially preserved representations in yellow, red, white, and black of the great bison, the wild boar, the horse, and other animals. A group representing some twenty-five or more animals (each about one third the size of nature), irregularly arranged, exists on a part of the roof, and others are found in other parts of the cavern. Among the wall-pictures made by ancientcave-men are numerous drawings of human beings in masks representing animals' heads—probably indicating the "dressing-up" in animal masks of priests or medicine men in the way in which we know to-day is the custom among many savage tribes. Twenty-seven of these "decorated" caverns were known in 1910—eleven in Spain, one in Italy, and fifteen in South and Central France—and others are continually being discovered. The most careful and critical examination by scientific men leaves no doubt as to the vast antiquity of these paintings, and as to their dating from a time when the animals painted (including in some cases mammoth and rhinoceros, as well as bison, reindeer, wild boar, ibex, red deer, bear, and felines) were existing in the locality. The covering up of some of the drawings (which are partly engraved and partly painted) by earthy deposits and by encrustations of lime, and the presence in the cave deposits of the worked flints and bones characteristic of the Reindeer men, leave no doubt that these pictures are of that immense antiquity which we express by the words "Quaternary period," "Upper Pleistocene" or "Reindeer epoch."

It is, of course, only in accordance with what one would expect that these pictures are of very varying degrees of artistic merit. But some (a considerable number) are quite remarkable for their true artistic quality. In this respect they differ from the rock paintings of modern savage races—the Bushmen of South Africa, the Australians, and the Californian Indians—with which, however, it is instructive to compare them. Many of them agree in their essential artistic character with the carving and engraving of animals on bone and ivory so abundantly produced by the later Reindeer men. It is also the fact that these Franco-Spanish wall paintings were executed at different periods in the Reindeer epoch. Some are more primitive than others; some are very badly preserved, mere scratched outlines with all the paint washed away by the moisture of ages; but others are bright and sharp in their colouring to a degree which is surprising when their age and long exposure are considered. The French prehistorians, M.M. Cartailacand the Abbé Breuil, have produced a sumptuous volume containing an account, with large coloured plates, of the best preserved of the Altamira paintings—a copy of which I owe to the kindness of H.S.H. the Prince of Monaco, who has ordered the publication of the work at his own charges. This has been followed by an equally fine work under the same auspices, illustrating the wall-pictures of the Cavern of the Font-de-Gaume in the Dordogne, for which we have to thank the Abbé Breuil. A further volume on Spanish Caves has also appeared from the same source in the present year. It is not surprising that the country folk, who, in some of the Spanish localities, have known the existence of these paintings from time immemorial, should regard them as the work of the ancient Moors, all ancient work in Spain being popularly attributed to the Moors, as a sort of starting-point in history. It is, however, very remarkable that little damage appears to have been done by the population to the paintings, even when they exist in shallow caves or on overhanging rocks. No doubt weathering, and the oozing of moisture, and the flaking caused by it, has destroyed most of the Pleistocene paintings which once existed, and it is an ascertained fact that some—for instance, those of Altamira—are breaking to pieces owing to the opening-up and frequentation of the caverns.

It has been remarked that, although these paintings belong to what is called the "reindeer epoch," yet in the cave of Altamira there are no representations of reindeer, but chiefly of bison and wild boar. It is also remarkable that in the case of the painted rock shelters of Calapata (Lower Aragon) and of Cogul (near Lerida, in Catalonia), no reindeer are represented; but on the former there are very admirable drawings of the red deer, and on the latter silhouettes of the bull, of the red deer, and the ibex. In fact, no representations of reindeer have been observed on cave walls or rock-shelters south of the Pyrenees. It is possible that this may be due to the date of the Spanish paintings being a good deal later than that of those French cave-paintings which show reindeer, mammoth, and rhinoceros. And we have to bear in mind that in theNorth of Africa (Oran) engraved drawings on exposed rocks are known, which are for good reasons attributed to the Neolithic period; that is to say, they are later than the Reindeer epoch of the Palæolithic period, whilst some are even much later.

In any case we have to remember that there are two very different and possible explanations of the presence or absence either of certain animals' bones or of representations of certain animals in one "decorated" cave and not in another. The one explanation is that animals have succeeded one another in time in Western Europe—changing as the climatic conditions have changed—and that when, in two cave-decorations or cave-deposits compared, the animals are different, the cause may be that the one deposit or cave-decoration is more recent than the other. The other explanation is that (as we well know) at one and the same moment very different animals occupy tracts of land which are only a hundred miles or so apart, but differ in climate and general conditions. At this moment there are wild bears and also wolves in France, but none in England; the elk occurs in Sweden and Russia, but not in the West of Europe; the porcupine in Italy and in Spain, but not in France. As late as the historic period the African elephant flourished on the African shore of the Mediterranean, but not in Spain; now it is not found north of the Sahara at all. So we have various possibilities to consider in comparing the animal pictures on the cave walls of Spain with those found in France, and may well suspend judgment till we have knowledge of a greatly extended area.

I am anxious to draw attention in this chapter to the painted group of ten human figures lately discovered on a rock shelter at Cogul, near Lerida, in Catalonia, and figured and described in the admirable French journal called "L'Anthropologie." These figures are those of young women dressed in short skirts and curious sleeves, the hair done up in a conical mass rising from the sides to the top of the head. Each figure is about ten inches high. The great interest about these drawings is thatthey are probably tens of thousands of years old, and present to us the women of the reindeer or late Pleistocene epoch. No other such painting of the women of this period is known, and the astonishing thing is that, though these are by no means fine specimens of prehistoric art, yet there is a definitely modern look about the figures and a freedom of touch about the drawing which makes one think at first that the picture is some modern, hasty but clever sketch in silhouette of a number of short skirted school girls at play. The waist is extremely small and elongated, the skirt, or petticoat, bell shaped, and the whole figure "sinuous." One of the figures appears to have a cloak or jacket, but the breasts and legs are bare.

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