very
short men among the people of the Hebrides than in England: I was now
struck by a similar mediocrity of size among the Highlanders of Western
Ross; five-sixths of the grown men seemed to average between five feet
seven and five feet nine inches in height, and either tall or short men
I found comparatively rare. The Highlanders of the eastern coast were,
on the contrary, at that period, mayhap still, very various of
stature--some of them exceedingly diminutive, others of great bulk and
height; and, as might be seen in the congregations of the parish
churches removed by but a few miles, there were marked differences in
this respect between the people of contiguous districts--certain tracts
of plain or valley producing larger races than others. I was inclined to
believe at the time that the middle-sized Highlanders of the west coast
were a less mixed race than the unequally-sized Highlanders of the east:
I at least found corresponding inequalities among the higher-born
Highland families, that, as shown by their genealogies, blended the
Norman and Saxon with the Celtic blood; and as the unequally-sized
Highland race bordered on that Scandinavian one which fringes the
greater part of the eastern coast of Scotland, I inferred that there had
been a similar blending of blood among _them_. I have since seen, in
Gustav Kombst's Ethnographic Map of the British Islands, the difference
which I at this time but inferred, indicated by a different shade of
colour, and a different name. The Highlanders of the east coast Kombst
terms "Scandinavian-Gaelic;" those of the west,
"Gaelic-Scandinavian-Gaelic,"--names indicative, of course, of the
proportions in which he holds that they possess the Celtic blood.
Disparity of bulk and size appears to be one of the consequences of a
mixture of races; nor does the induced inequality seem restricted to the
physical framework. Minds of large calibre, and possessed of the kingly
faculty, come first into view, in our history, among the fused tribes,
just as of old it was the mixed marriages that first produced the
giants. The difference in size which I remarked in particular districts
of the Scandinavian-Gaelic region, separated, in some instances, by but
a ridge of hills or an expanse of moor, must have been a result of the
old clan divisions, and is said to have marked the clans themselves very
strongly. Some of them were of a greatly more robust, and some of a
slimmer type, than others.

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