On the Dwarven Constitution

The Dwarf presents an inconvenience to those natural philosophers who arrange the sapient peoples upon a graduated scale, with themselves occupying its most agreeable elevation. His stature permits them to place him low; his strength obliges them to reconsider; and his probable attendance at their great-grandchildren’s funerals introduces a difficulty which their diagrams seldom accommodate. Comparison requires separate measurements of separate qualities. In the Dwarven constitution, the most consequential association is between a heavily built skeleton, considerable muscular power within a compact frame, and a life sufficiently long that the consequences of an occupation may require a century to become evident. These characteristics influence one another; they do not explain Dwarven poetry, nor excuse the habit of attributing every unfamiliar custom to the bones.

Dwarven bone is heavier than Human bone of equal volume, and its internal arrangement differs sufficiently that a section may generally be identified without knowledge of its provenance. The supporting partitions are thick, with numerous connections across the spaces occupied by marrow. Such construction affords considerable resistance to compression; it also imposes weight, which must be carried whether its possessor is lifting a girder or climbing the stairs to my laboratory. Dwarven strength is most conspicuous in work performed close to the body, with secure footing; comparisons made by asking a Dwarf and a Human to reach across the same broad bench chiefly measure the stupidity of the experimenter. An Aesir labourer may move a burden which neither can stir, while possessing less strength in proportion to his own weight. Both observations are useful. The assertion that one people is simply “the strongest” has so far proved useful principally to promoters of wrestling exhibitions.

The mineral requirements of this skeleton deserve more attention than they commonly receive. Dwarves do not eat stone. I repeat the statement because a professor of geography has recently illustrated the contrary proposition, and an error furnished with a woodcut acquires a deplorable tenacity. Dwarven households obtain the necessary substances through foods and preparations whose recipes often precede any adequate understanding of their purpose. At Caddick Bank, a railway contractor replaced the quarrymen’s customary meal with a ration calculated, by weight and expense, to equal that of his Human crews. Gum tenderness and persistent aching followed among the Dwarves, although the men received ample bread and meat. He attributed their complaints to resentment of the new management. I required him to explain how resentment produced the same changes in the mouths of men who welcomed his appointment. Restoration of their former mineral-rich broth accompanied a gradual improvement. That result justified restoring the ration; it did not identify which constituent had been deficient, a distinction the contractor found unnecessarily expensive.

Their longevity introduces a further difficulty into every account of Dwarven health. A Dwarf of sixty is neither a Human of sixty nor the Human youth that dividing one lifespan by the other would make of him: growth, sexual maturity and the deterioration of particular tissues do not proceed in the same proportion. Dwarves acquire adult stature long before they have consumed the corresponding fraction of their expected lives, and their teeth do not conveniently renew themselves to suit an anatomist’s love of symmetry. The widely separated births characteristic of their communities also make a few prosperous households a poor foundation for claims about fertility. Among Elves, the period required for a satisfactory family history is still more formidable; among Gremlins, several generations may pass while a Dwarven investigator is improving his questionnaire. I have therefore urged our institutions to preserve measurements in forms intelligible to their successors. An observation which dies with its observer is an extravagant use of a short-lived scholar.

The supposed universal fitness of Dwarves for underground life is contradicted by the existence of entire Dwarven populations whose acquaintance with a mine begins at its entrance and usually ends there. Among communities long established below ground, greater tolerance of certain foul atmospheres is nevertheless well attested; its limits are less satisfactorily known. At the Bellfounder workings I once allowed the apparent comfort of my Dwarven companions to reassure me after my own headache had begun. The overman, Mistress Hadrik, ordered the gallery cleared; I argued that we should first complete our readings. She removed my instrument case, correctly judging which member of the expedition I should follow. Subsequent examination showed that the ventilation door had jammed. I had mistaken another constitution’s delayed distress for evidence of safety, an error considerably beneath the standard I demand of my students. Hadrik’s judgement rested upon thirty years of watching air currents and lamps. Her ancestry had supplied no substitute for that knowledge.

Much the same correction applies to Dwarven vision and direction. In weak light, some individuals perform exceptionally well; in complete darkness they see nothing. Their celebrated navigation depends upon attention to gradients, draughts, tool marks and the remembered disposition of passages. These accomplishments are learnt, and can be neglected. I have watched a young Dwarf become lost in a pumping station through which a Human fitter moved without hesitation. Resemblance supplies equally poor evidence in the disputed relationship between Dwarves and Kobolds. A short body and certain similarities of the skeleton establish subjects for examination. Until corresponding internal structures, development and inheritance have been adequately compared, a pedigree joining the two remains a proposal; printing it at the front of a natural history does not promote it into an ancestor.

A long life does, however, alter the conditions under which knowledge and authority are maintained. A Dwarven machinist may remember why a regulation was adopted when his Human colleagues know only its wording; he may also remember the circumstances so affectionately that he refuses to acknowledge their disappearance. The persistence of Dwarven law benefits from such living witnesses, together with archives whose administrative reach still bears the impress of the Great Dwarven Empire. Neither persistence nor obstinacy can be extracted from a specimen of bone. Their study requires the same discipline as physiology: distinguish what has been observed from what has merely been repeated, and compare communities before assigning a habit to a whole people. Dwarves themselves disagree vigorously about inherited practice. The investigator who attends only to their agreements will produce a simpler account, and should expect it to be corrected at length by almost any Dwarf who reads it.