[Pitchwife]

*succumbs to temptation of playing advocatus diaboli*

Originally Posted by Galin

Or did Orcs dwindle maybe, and at first 'regular' orcs from the First Age were taller? Or something I'm not thinking of.

Originally Posted by Galin a few posts later

I guess if we speculatively add Dwarves that might add yet another race! but I would rather embiggen the orcs of the Elder Days somehow, and attribute a dwindling to... well something.

Don't we know of another race that is said to have 'dwindled' in physical height? From LotR Prologue, Concerning Hobbits:

Their height is variable, ranging between two and three feet of our measure. They seldom now reach three feet; but they have dwindled, they say, and in ancient days they were taller.

Strange coincidence, isn't it?

Originally Posted by Inziladun

It's really difficult for me to believe that Hobbits played a part, even an unwilling one, in the making of Orcs with Sauron displaying such ignorance of them.

That would depend on how closely Sauron was involved with Morgoth's breeding project. Plus, aren't Hobbits supposed to be a race or, in modern language, sub-species of ultimately Mannish stock? Again from the Prologue:

It is plain indeed that in spite of later estrangement Hobbits are relatives of ours: far nearer to us than Elves, or even than Dwarves.

Now we don't know around which time in history the Hobbits branched off from the Big People, but I'm inclined to think that they weren't originally that much shorter than the average Man (maybe only a foot or so?) and only 'dwindled' to halfling size over time, possibly adapting to their semi-subterranean lifestyle. So Sauron needn't necessarily have made the mental connection between the hypothetical Proto-Hobbits used in Orc-breeding far back in prehistory and the contemporary midgets of the late Third Age.