Miani's pygmies were members of a tribe discovered by the distinguished traveller Schweinfurth, who, in 1870, was the first to visit the country of the Niam-Niam, to the west of the sources of the Nile, and had the honour of showing that the myths of the ancient Greeks as to a nation of pygmies were based on fact, and that the definite words of Aristotle as to the existence of these pygmy people on the upper reaches of the Nile were correct. Schweinfurth found to the south of the Niam-Niam country a tribe of full-statured negroes called the Mombootoos, whose chief, Moonza, kept close to the Royal residence a colony of pygmies who were called in that country by the name "Akkas." Schweinfurth ascertained that they are spread to the number of many thousands along the borders of the great Congo forest and form numerous tribes. They are very generally well treated by their more powerful neighbours, as by Moonza. Partly from fear of their poisoned arrows and their crafty methods of attack and subsequent disappearance into the forest, partly on account of a superstitious dread of them, the Congo pygmies are not only tolerated, but protected, by the larger people. They alone are at home in the steaming darkness of the immeasurable forest into which no other natives dare to enter. It is a remarkable fact that the Egyptologist Mariette had, before these discoveries, found on an ancient Egyptian monument the portrait of a dwarf inscribed with the word "akka"--the identical name by which they are known at this day in the region where Schweinfurth found them. Public interest in the pygmy race was rearoused three years ago by the announcement that the party of English naturalists at that time exploring the interior of New Guinea had come across a tribe of these little people in the mountains of that island. The existence of these pygmies in New Guinea was already well known, but fuller accounts of them will be valuable. The Italian traveller Beccari, in 1876, speaks of them as "Karonis," and states that they occupy a chain of mountains parallel to the north coast of the north-west peninsular of the island. D'Albertis, Lawes, and other travellers have seen and described individuals of the pygmy race of the mountains of New Guinea. It is interesting to find that they are described as having the body covered with fine, woolly hair, a feature which is recorded by Schweinfurth, by Stanley, and by an ancient Greek writer, in regard to the Congo pygmies of Africa, and led in former times to the notion that the old traditions and accounts of African pygmies referred, not to human beings, but to chimpanzees!