They are inclined to be at in the stomach they dress in bright colours (chiefly green and yellow) wear no shoes, because their feet grow natural leathery soles and thick warm brown hair like the stuff on their heads (which is curly) have long clever brown fingers, good-natured faces, and laugh deep fruity laughs (especially after dinner, which they have twice a day when they can get it). There is little or no magic about them, except the ordinary everyday sort which helps them to disappear quietly and quickly when large stupid folk like you and me come blundering along, making a noise like elephants which they can hear a mile off. They are (or were) a little people, about half our height, and smaller than the bearded Dwarves. what is a hobbit? I suppose hobbits need some description nowadays, since they have become rare and shy of the Big People, as they call us. He may have lost the neighbours' respect, but he gained-well, you will see whether he gained anything in the end. This is a story of how a Baggins had an adventure, found himself doing and saying things altogether unexpected.

The Bagginses had lived in the neighbourhood of The Hill for time out of mind, and people considered them very respectable, not only because most of them were rich, but also because they never had any adventures or did anything unexpected: you could tell what a Baggins would say on any question without the bother of asking him. This hobbit was a very well-to-do hobbit, and his name was Baggins. The best rooms were all on the left-hand side (going in), for these were the only ones to have windows, deep-set round windows looking over his garden and meadows beyond, sloping down to the river. No going upstairs for the hobbit: bedrooms, bathrooms, cellars, pantries (lots of these), wardrobes (he had whole rooms devoted to clothes), kitchens, dining-rooms, all were on the same floor, and indeed on the same passage. The tunnel wound on and on, going fairly but not quite straight into the side of the hill - The Hill, as all the people for many miles round called it - and many little round doors opened out of it, first on one side and then on another. The door opened on to a tube-shaped hall like a tunnel: a very comfortable tunnel without smoke, with panelled walls, and floors tiled and carpeted, provided with polished chairs, and lots and lots of pegs for hats and coats - the hobbit was fond of visitors. It had a perfectly round door like a porthole, painted green, with a shiny yellow brass knob in the exact middle.

Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort.

In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.

The Annotated Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien