[Footnote B: _Jour. Anthrop. Inst._, v. 181.]

In the great continent of America there does not appear to have ever been,
so far as our present knowledge teaches, any pigmy race. Dr. Brinton, the
distinguished American ethnologist, to whom I applied for information on
this point, has been good enough to write to me that, in his opinion,
there is no evidence of any pigmy race in America. The "little people" of
the "stone graves" in Tennessee, often supposed to be such, were children,
as the bones testify. The German explorer Hassler has alleged the
existence of a pigmy race in Brazil, but testimony is wanting to support
such allegation. There are two tribes of very short but not pigmy stature
in America, the Yahgans of Tierra del Fuégo and the Utes of Colorado, but
both of these average over five feet.

Leaving aside for the moment the Lapps, to whom I shall return, there does
not appear to have been at any time a really pigmy race in Europe, so far
as any discoveries which have been made up to the present time show.
Professor Topinard, whose authority upon this point cannot be gainsaid,
informs me that the smallest race known to him in Central Europe is that
of the pre-historic people of the Lozère, who were Neolithic troglodytes,
and are represented probably at the present day by some of the peoples of
South Italy and Sardinia. Their average stature was about five feet two
inches. This closely corresponds with what is known of the stature of the
Platycnemic race of Denbighshire, the Perthi-Chwareu. Busk[A] says of them
that they were of low stature, the mean height, deduced from the lengths
of the long bones, being little more than five feet. As both sexes are
considered together in this description, it is fair to give the male a
stature of about five feet two inches,[B] It also corresponds with the
stature assigned by Pitt-Rivers to a tribe occupying the borders of
Wiltshire and Dorsetshire during the Roman occupation, the average height