DWARF

a term applied to any animal or plant greatly below the usual size of its kind, particularly to a human being of small dimensions. Strictly speaking, the term should be used with reference to individuals and not to races. When a whole population consists of people of small stature, the proper term to apply to them is pigmies, not dwarfs. Accounts of pigmy tribes have been common from early times, such tribes being located especially in Africa; and it would appear from the accounts of Du Chaillu, Schweinfurth, and other travellers that there are several pigmy tribes throughout this continent. The Obongo, a race of dwarfs, are described as living in woods near the Okanda River, in wretched huts made of branches. Other races are the Mabongo, and the Akka dwarfs of Central Africa (see AKKAS); and a race exists in the Congo State, not as a distinct community, however, but mixed with other tribes. Individual dwarfs occur in all races, and were formerly a fashionable appendage to the courts of princes and the families of nobles. Jeffery Hudson, the favourite dwarf of Charles I, at the age of thirty is said to have been only 18 inches high, though he afterwards grew to 3 feet 9inches. Bébé, the celebrated dwarf of Stan is las of Poland, was 33 inches; Wybrand Lolkes, a Dutch dwarf, when sixty years of age was only 27 inches; Charles H. Stratton, ‘General Tom Thumb,’ was 31 inches high at the age of twenty-five; Francis Flynn, “General Mite,’ was only 21 inches at sixteen. In most of the extreme eases the dwarfing is the result of some defect in the ductle glands which regulate the normal growth of the body. Stories of dwarfs and brownies are to be found in the folklore of many tribes on earth.— BIBLIOGRAPHY: HE. J. Wood, Giants and Dwarfs; E. Tyson, Philological 22 DWARFING E ay concerning Pygmies of the Ancienis.