y important difference from the negroes
is that of size, and regards them as the remains of a primitive
population from whom the negroes have descended.

In a preceding section a statement was made as to what was the probable
general appearance of the man-ape. It was based upon the physical aspect
of the Pygmies, whom we hold to form the immediate derivative of man's
ape ancestor, and to have made no radical change in personal appearance,
if we may judge from the various ape-like characteristics which they
still present. Mentally they have made a very considerable advance, and
have reached the stage of men of low intellectual powers; but while
their brains have been growing their bodies have not greatly changed,
and the marks of their origin are thick upon them. There has probably
been little change in size, the diminutive stature and small bodily
dimensions being in accord with their incessant activity, while the
difficulties of traversing the thick growth of the tropical forest may
have helped to keep them small. As it is, they are of about half the
size of civilized man, the weight of a full grown adult male being
probably not over ninety pounds.

Taking the Pygmies as a whole, it may be said that, though many of the
Akkas are disproportionate in shape and tottering in gait, on the whole
these people are well made, their protuberant paunch being probably a
result of their habits of eating. Captain Guy Burrows says that a Pygmy
will eat twice as much as would suffice a full-grown man, and that one
of them will devour a whole stalk of bananas at a meal, with other food.
Some tribes are described as physically and mentally degenerate, and
prognathism is in many cases strongly declared, the lower part of the
face having an ape-like contour, and the protruding chin, that feature
peculiar to man, being very deficient. In their great abdominal
development the adult Akkas resemble the children of Arabs and negroes.
This, therefore, seems the retention of a primitive feature which has
become a passing characteristic in the more advanced types of mankind.

The Pygmies are not destitute of intelligence, and are capable of
receiving some of the elements of education. Two of them were brought to
Italy about 1875, who within two years' time learned to read and write
and to speak Italian with much fluency. They showed themselves superior
in school studies to European children of ten or twelve years of age,
and one of them became