Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 37.djvu/677

Rh facts. The physical characteristics in which, broadly speaking, they all agree, are their small stature, their light-yellow or reddish-brown color, and the peculiar character of the hair, which is woolly, but, instead of being, as in the negro, evenly distributed over the scalp, grows in small tufts—"cheveux plantés en pinceaux de brosse," as Emin Pasha puts it in speaking of the Akkas. This appearance, according to Prof. Virchow, is not due to the fact that the hair grows on some spots and not on others, but to a peculiarity in the texture of the hair itself, which causes it to roll naturally into closely curled spiral locks, leaving the intervening pieces of scalp bare. Be this as it may, this growth is the surest and most permanent characteristic of the Pygmy, or, as some prefer to call them, the Hottentot-Bushman race.

The name of dwarfs, applied by some to these people, has be objected to as implying deformity or arrested growth, and therefore conveying a wrong impression. Nothing of the kind can be said of the African Pygmies, who, though of short stature, are well-shaped people of perfectly normal formation. It is true that the Hottentots and Bushmen show certain strange anatomical peculiarities; but these may be said to be more or less accidental, being, in part at least, the result of special and unfavorable conditions of life.

The Pygmies are nomadic in their habits, and neither keep cattle nor till the ground, but live by hunting and snaring wild animals and birds, or, under the most unfavorable circumstances, on wild fruits, roots, and berries. Their weapons are always bows and arrows, the latter usually poisoned—the resource of the weak. They have no fixed abode, and, if they build shelters at all, only construct rude huts of branches. They have no government, nor do they form regular communities; they usually wander about, like our gypsies, in hordes composed of a few families each. This,