Probably the Bushmen, or Bosjesmen, are the modern representatives of the Pygmaioi, for in their cave-dwelling, reptile-eating, and other peculiarities they agree entirely with the descriptions given by Herodotus, Pliny, and other ancient writers. The Bosjesmen are found, with all the peculiarities of their dwarfish race intact, as far north as Guinea. Winwood Reade, in his “Savage Africa,” gives many interesting details concerning them, and holds the view that they were the aboriginal race in Africa. Dr. Stuhlmann, Emin Pacha’s companion in many of his wanderings, succeeded for the first time in bringing pygmies alive to Europe, some members of the Akka tribe being brought to Berlin, where they were regarded with immense interest by the professors of anthropology. The truthfulness of the ancient geographers being thus confirmed, it is quite possible that the tales of the conflicts of the pygmies with great birds may have a more solid foundation of fact than we are quite prepared to admit. The Maori traditions tell of the contests with the moa and other gigantic birds which formerly inhabited the islands of New Zealand; while the Jesuit missionaries give accounts of enormous birds once found in Abyssinia and Madagascar. All these are now extinct, but it may well be that to a dwarf race, armed only with bows and arrows, such birds would be foes by no means to be despised. One finds the trustworthiness of the old writers often so curiously confirmed that one hesitates in the case of many of them to assume too readily either gross credulity or a willful misstatement. Amidst the millions of births in the animal creation there is scarcely any conceivable malformation, excess, or defect of parts, that has not at some time or other occurred; anyone turning to the medical and surgical journals will find many strange illustrations of this, or our readers may find much interesting information on this subject, and given in a less technical form, in the “Histoire Générale des Anomalies” of Geoffroi de St. Hilaire. But such malformations occur singly and at comparatively remote intervals; the anomalous departure from the type, the eccentricity of structure, is not hereditarily produced, does not become the starting-point of a new species. No natural malformation, allowance being made for the very restricted influence of hybridism, ever passes outside the species in which it is found or combines with it the character of any other creature, while even the limited possibilities of hybridism have a tendency to die out, owing to the sterility that is so marked a characteristic. Such monsters as Aldrovandus figures are utterly impossible, such as the body of a man conjoined to the head of an ass, and having one foot that of an eagle, and the other that of an elephant.