Stature is partly a matter of feeding and hence of geographic condition.
In mountain regions, where the food resources are scant, the varieties
of wild animals are characterized by smaller size in general than are
corresponding species in the lowlands. It is a noticeable fact that
dwarfed horses or ponies have originated in islands, in Iceland, the
Shetlands, Corsica and Sardinia. This is due either to scanty and
unvaried food or to excessive inbreeding, or probably to both. The
horses introduced into the Falkland Islands in 1764 have deteriorated so
in size and strength in a few generations that they are in a fair way to
develop a Falkland variety of pony.[39] On the other hand, Mr. Homer
Davenport states that the pure-bred Arabian horses raised on his New
Jersey stock farm are in the third generation a hand higher than their
grandsires imported from Arabia, and of more angular build. The result
is due to more abundant and nutritious food and the elimination of long
desert journeys.

The low stature of the natives prevailing in certain "misery spots" of
Europe, as in the Auvergne Plateau of southern France, is due in part to
race, in part to a disastrous artificial selection by the emigration of
the taller and more robust individuals, but in considerable part to the
harsh climate and starvation food-yield of that sterile soil; for the
children of the region, if removed to the more fertile valleys of the
Loire and Garonne, grow to average stature.[40] The effect of a scant and
uncertain food supply is especially clear in savages, who have erected
fewer buffers between themselves and the pressure of environment. The
Bushmen of the Kalahari Desert are shorter than their Hottentot kindred
who pasture their flocks and herds in the neighboring grasslands.[41]
Samoyedes, Lapps, and other hyperborean races of Eurasia are shorter
than their more southern neighbors, the physical record of an immemorial
struggle against cold and hunger. The stunted forms and wretched aspect