Racial Dwarfs in the Pyrenees

Abstract

BEING on the Riviera when I received NATURE of January 26 with Mr. Haliburton's letter on the above subject, I proposed to act on his suggestion, and, on my way back to England, to explore the region indicated. To ensure, however, that the proposed exploration should not be a wild-goose chase, I first entered into communication with all the British consuls and French savants likely to have special knowledge of the subject, and more particularly with M. Cartailhac, director of l'Anthropologie, and who resides at Toulouse, “within little more than a half-day's journey” from the valleys named by Mr. Haliburton. I was favoured with interesting replies from all those to whom I had written with the single exception, very curiously, of our consul at Barcelona, a letter from whom you published, and who appears to have been Mr. Haliburton's chief authority. As to the replies I received, I need only say that they so strongly negatived the assertion of there being “racial dwarfs,” though admitting that there are “certains goitreux de petite taille,” in the Pyrenean valleys, that I did not think it worth while to make the proposed journey. And as Mr. Haliburton repeats, in the current Asiatic Quarterly, the assertions made in NATURE, I feel bound to state these facts, though I may say that I quite agree with him as to the probability of a former wide distribution of dwarf races, and should have found Pyrenean dwarfs, had they been discoverable, in most interesting relations to the Ligurian giants, whose caves I had been exploring at Baoussé Roussé—the “Red Rocks” of Grimaldi.