mistake to suppose that all races reaching a lower average height than
five feet four inches are, in any accurate sense of the word, to be looked
upon as pigmies. We have to descend to a considerably lower figure before
that appellation can be correctly employed. The stature must fall
considerably below five feet before we can speak of the race as one of
dwarfs or pigmies. Anthropometrical authorities have not as yet agreed
upon any upward limit for such a class, but for our present purposes it
may be convenient to say that any race in which the average male stature
does not exceed four feet nine inches--that is, the average height of a
boy of about twelve years of age--may fairly be described as pigmy. It is
most important to bear this matter of inches in mind in connection with
points which will have to be considered in a later section.

Pigmy races still exist in considerable numbers in Asia and the adjacent
islands, and as it was in that continent that, so far as our present
knowledge goes, they had in former days their greatest extension, and, if
De Quatrefages be correct, their place of origin, it will be well to deal
first with the tribes of that quarter of the globe. "The Negrito" (_i.e._,
pigmy black) "type," says the authority whom I have just quoted, and to
whom I shall have to be still further indebted,[A] "was first placed in
South Asia, which it without doubt occupied alone during an indeterminate
period. It is thence that its diverse representatives have radiated, and,
some going east, some west, have given rise to the black populations of
Melanesia and Africa. In particular, India and Indo-China first belonged
to the blacks. Invasions and infiltrations of different yellow or white
races have split up these Negrito populations, which formerly occupied a
continuous area, and mixing with them, have profoundly altered them. The
present condition of things is the final result of strifes and mixtures,
the most ancient of which may be referred back to prehistoric times." The
invasions above mentioned having in the past driven many of the races from