One of the chief constituents of every fairy story is the giant or dwarf, who occupies a central position. That giants and dwarfs exist today there can be no doubt. They are frequently to be seen in the side-shows, and even in public life. But it is now known that giants and dwarfs suffer from a certain disease, which renders them particularly short-lived; and they are, generally speaking, muscularly weak for their size. They are not the stalwart, fierce race of beings imagined in the fairy stories, and which popular belief still pictures them. For the fairy tale, the giant is always enormous and powerful, and generally cannibalistic in his habits! Have giants of this character existed? Could such a race have existed? To this question it is almost certain that we must answer "No." M. Dastre, of the Sorbonne, Paris, has gone into this question at great length, and has given us the result of his researches in his essay on _The Stature of Man at Various Epochs_. Here he says: "It is incontestable that beings of gigantic size do appear from time to time.... Giants are men whose development, instead of pursuing a normal course, has undergone a morbid deviation, and whose nutrition has become perverted. They are dystrophic. Their great stature shows that one part has gained at the loss of another. It is a symptom of their inferiority in the struggle for existence. Their condition is not only a variation from the ordinary conditions of development--that is to say, they are 'congenital monsters,' the study of which belongs to the science of teratology--but it is a variation also from a state of health, physically and normally sound. In other words, they are diseased, and fall within the domain of the pathologist. Here then, as Brissaud says, you have your giants despoiled of their ancient and favourite prestige. Mythology yields the place to pathology." The _causes_ of gigantism and of dwarfs are now well known. In the brain there is a tiny gland known as the pituitary gland, weighing little more than half a gram, and divided into two portions--the "anterior" and the "posterior" lobes. Hypertrophy of the _anterior_ lobe causes gigantism. The bones grow to an exaggerated length; the hands, feet, and bones of the face grow enormous. When, on the contrary, the secretions of the anterior lobe are insufficient, the body remains small, undergrown and delicate. The secretions of the _posterior_ lobe, on the other hand, insure the undue accumulation of fat, and disturb the functional activities. Other ductless glands in the body also affect the mental and physiological functions of the whole organism.