authoritative, that we must here quote a portion of them in spite of their length. Speaking of the horse and ass, the tame bull and wild buffalo, the three species of bears, etc., he says: "The ground on which these animals are considered distinct species is simply the fact, that, since they have been known to man, they have always preserved the same characteristics. To make specific difference or identity depend upon genetic succession is begging the principle, and taking for granted the question under discussion....We know that the horse and ass, etc., may be crossed, we are therefore not justified in doubtful cases in considering the fertility of two animals as decisive of their specific identity; any definition of species, in which the question of generation is introduced, is therefore objectionable. The assumption that the fertility of cross-breeds is necessarily limited to one or two generations does not alter the case, since, in many instances, it is not proved beyond dispute. It is, however, beyond all question, that individuals of distinct species may in certain cases be productive with one another as well as with their own kind........I am prepared to show that the differences existing between the races of men, are of the same kind as the differences observed between the different families, genera, and species of monkeys or other animals;...nay, the differences between distinct races are often greater than those distinguishing species of animals one from the other.... Unity is determined by a typical structure, and by the similarity of natural abilities and propensities; and, unless we deny the typical relations of the cat tribe, for instance, we must admit that unity is not only compatible with diversity of origin, but that it is the universal law of nature."

II. It was asserted by Prichard, and has been reasserted, as a capital point in their argument, by all monogenists, that the union of any two human races is capable of producing an offspring continuously fertile. This proposition is, as we hope to show, at least premature.

In the first place, we ask with M. Pouchet,* "have all, or anything like all, the combinations been tried? the union, for instance, of the Esquimaux and the Negro, of the American and Australian, of the Tartar and Bosjesman?" Moreover, is it certain that of those which have been tried all are capable of producing a progeny capable of perpetuation? M. Broca, who has made hybridity his special study, expressly denies it. Is it, for instance, certain that the hybridt between the European and the Australian woman is fertile in even the first instance? Does there exist-in spite of the opportunities which have occurred a single hybrid between the European and the Andamaner? or between the Kaffir and Hottentot? or between the diminutive Negroes of the Philippines and the Malay? or between the Veddahs and Cingalese? Count Strzelecki asserted that Australian women, who had once lived with Europeans, became infertile for their own race. If this were certain, it would be a most important fact; but it has been keenly contested. On the one hand, Goodsir,

De la plur. des Races Hum., p. 134.

+ Such half-castes are very rare. Jacquinot, Voy. au Pôle Sud. Zoologie, ii, 353. Om. d'Halloy, Des Races Hum., p. 108.

Carmichael, and Maunsell have pronounced it unquestionable;* on the other hand, Mr. F. Heywood-Thompsont has denied it absolutely. This much, however, appears to be certain, viz., that such a mixture of races produces among several savage tribes a strong tendency to sterility, and this is a consideration which obviously has much weight in the argument.

It is true, that M. Om. d'Halloy reckons the number of halfcastes in the world as amounting to the enormous sum of 12,300,000. But this proves nothing, unless it can also be shewn that they are maintained without infusion of fresh blood, and solely by intermarriages among themselves. Now, after all that has been asserted, it is extremely doubtful whether there exists on the globe a single hybrid race. M. Pouchet, supported by a host of great authorities, maintains that there does not. In many cases it is known that the intermarriage of hybrids leads to rapid extinction. The Griquas on the Orange River -the favourite instance of Prichard and all monogenists—a tribe of half-breeds between Dutch and Kaffirs, are asserted by eye-witnesses to be constantly replenished by fresh blood, or else to revert rapidly to the African type. Nor is there any other single people§ which can be pointed out as a positive proof that a race of hybrids can maintain itself without constant fresh infusions. As long as this is the case, and as long as we find such writers as Dr. Knox and M. Broca denying the universal fertility of different human varieties, or the certain continuation of any really hybrid races, we may safely hold that the question is as yet very far from being so decided as monogenists have maintained.

Nor are positive facts wanting to support the belief that a race formed by the mixture of two very different types is incapable¶ of maintaining itself. The Mamelukes could never propagate their race in Egypt. In the Isle of Flinders, where perished the last miserable remnants of the aboriginal Tasmanians, barely one or two children grew up from the intercourse of the convicts with the native women. M. de Rochas** says, that in New Caledonia, in spite of very numerous unions, he only met two half-castes. There are half-castes of Kanaka women (in the Sandwich Isles) with Europeans,†† Negroes, Bull. de la Soc. d'Anthr., Apr. 1860. Des Races Hum., pp. 109, 117.

+ Journ. of Ethn. Soc.

Of the Cafusos, a cross between blacks and red-skins, we must know a great deal more, before we can accept them as a case in point. Prichard (Nat. Hist. of Man, i, 27) quotes an account of them from Martius and Spix, Travels in Brazil.

See on this subject, Dr. Knox, On Race; and Broca, Sur l'Hybriditė, passim; Caldwell, On Unity, p. 35; Rev. des Deux Mondes, viii, 162; Col. Hamilton Smith, Nat. Hist. of the Human Species, p. 21; Pouchet, p. 78; Dr. Knox, On Acclimation; Nott and Gliddon, Types of Mankind, p. 465; Indigenous Races, p. 367; Squier, Notes on Central America, pp. 54-58; Davis and Thurnam, Crania Britannica, p. 7.

Some of these facts are attested by M. Pouchet, pp. 135-153. He quotes Types of Mankind, p. 373; Boudin, Geog. Méd., xxxix; Indigenous Races, p. 443; Squier, Nicaragua, ii, 153; Cabanis, Rapports du Physique et du Moral, i, 484; Courtet de l'Isle, Tabl. Ethnogr., p. 77, etc.

** Bulletins de la Soc. d'Anthrop., Apl. 1860, p. 402.

++ Ibid., July 1860, p. 509.

and Chinese, but two half-castes are never fertile among themselves. According to Dr. Nott, half-castes are short-lived, and, if they intermarry, are unprolific. In Java, according to Dr. Boudin-a very high authority-the half-breeds between Dutch and Malays cannot subsist beyond the third generation. The Zambos-sons of Indians and Negroes-are the most degraded and criminal of all classes; the sons of Spaniards and Indians are weak and poor in type. Mixture of types in most cases, if not in all, leads to "abrutissement" and degradation. Mulattoes, as is well known to practical physicians, have a special tendency to consumption and other diseases. From a multitude of such considerations M. Pouchet deduces two laws:-1. That no mixed race can exist of itself. 2. That when two races come in contact, either one absorbs the other, or they continue unchanged side by side, with a third inferior and less numerous set of half-castes.

Hybridity was one of the three causa degenerationis, which, according to Blumenbach, caused the primeval white race to degenerate into dark varieties; the other two being climate, and mode of life. We may remark, in passing, that these must for Prichard, and those who follow him in regarding all races to have sprung from the black and stupid African, be considered on the other hand as causæ perfectionis! With climate and mode of life as supposed causes of variety we are not here concerned; but all that has been advanced about hybridity in this brief paper will amply tend to prove that the crossing of races, so far from producing differences, only attenuates them, by creating a mean between two extremes. "It does not produce varieties, but is only the consequence of them; and even in this limited function its action is insignificant."

*

Professor Rudolph Wagner, in his Anthropological Lecture before the Naturalists at Göttingen, put forward what he stated to be "certain results" of ethnology in seven axioms, of which two were that "the differences between various nations are not greater than those between animals of the same species, e. g., the dog and sheep"; and "that all races of mankind produce fertile hybrids." We have seen how baseless both axioms are, and we may add that recent scientific inquiries have pointed out the groundlessness of the assumption that the dog, for instance, forms in all its varieties but one single species.

So that in this branch of the subject-which is one on which monogenists most firmly rely-the facts tend powerfully against them; even if we accept their arbitrary criterion of species, which we do not; and even if we admit, which we do not, that unity of species is incompatible with descent from different pairs. It seems to us, that their method of treating this subject has been to assume the unity of the human species as an axiom, and then to prove it by a definition!†

Professor CARL VOGT (who spoke in French) said that the question was one which demanded great consideration, and on which many theories had been propounded, though none of them had received general acceptance. They were met at the very first step, in consi§ Jessen, Ueber die Lebensdauer der Gewächsse. Bonn, 1855.

Pouchet, De la Plur., p. 118.

VOL. II.NO. VI.

+ Vogt, Köhlergl., § 1.

dering the subject, with the difficulty of defining what is meant by species. By some persons it was regarded as an assemblage of individuals who reproduce their exact similitudes; but the continuance of fruitful intercourse proved, on examination, to be a very defective definition of species. Some classes of animals, for example, reproduce with others that are apparently dissimilar; and some which appear to approach each other in kind are not fruitful. The distinction of species could not, indeed, be proved by unfruitfulness any more than similarity of species could be established by continued fertility. He instanced the great differences between different kinds of dogs, which all reproduce, though one kind is only to be distinguished from another by its distinctive external characters. The question of distinction of species by hybridity could not, therefore, be determined, because they were ignorant in what the distinction of species consists. The external characters of animals also undergo much change by change of climate, of which the altered character of the dog introduced into Paraguay formed an example. The question might, perhaps, be resolved into a question of the transmutation of species; and to a certain extent he agreed with Mr. Darwin in that theory. As it was impossible to determine in what difference of species consists, either from the external character of animals or from hybridity, it was evident the question became one of great difficulty. To add to its complexity, there might be internal and external influences which affected reproduction in one case and not in another, and that increased the difficulty of arriving at any safe conclusion as to species from the test of hybridity. The difference of climate, for example, had a powerful influence on productiveness, of which the great fertility of the French in Algeria was an instance. There were, in fact, a multitude of considerations which affect hybridity, and before they could arrive at any satisfactory conclusion respecting the effect of hybridity as a distinguishing test of species, it would be necessary to ascertain what were the influences that affect it, and how far those influences operate. The question of hybridity, he considered, did not prove anything as to the unity or diversity of the origin of the human race.

Mr. A. R. WALLACE thought the meeting were much indebted to M. Vogt for the eloquent and forcible manner in which he had pointed out the excessive difficulty and complexity of the subject, and the state of ignorance which generally prevails as to what constitutes species. All the facts stated in the paper would, however, go to prove that no two nations could produce fertile offspring, for it might be said that in all instances where fertility existed there had been an influx of new blood. Such problems could not be satisfactorily solved, because it was impossible to make the requisite experiments on men. It might be done with animals, but with men it was a different thing. The only method by which the problem could be solved would be, to introduce into some island women of one race and men of another, and leave them to themselves, taking care that no other races were admitted on the island. But as that could not be done, no evidence could be obtained that was not open to objection. One of the in

stances alluded to in the paper, as affording evidence against the general fertility of human races, rested on but slight grounds. It was asserted that with the Australians there was great difficulty in producing offspring even at the first cross, and that instances of subsequent fertility are rare. But he had received a communication from a friend, who had recently come from Australia, which contradicted that opinion. He stated that he had known two instances of Australian women having had children by white men and afterwards by men of their own tribe. Numerous cases of the kind, he said, occurred in the bush, in one of which the woman had four children; but the illegitimate children were always destroyed by the chiefs of tribes, which accounted for their scarcity. His friend also mentioned that he had seen half-castes who had children of their own, and his evidence also contradicted the assertion of Count Strzelecki, that Australian women who had lived with Europeans became infertile for their own race. There was the well known case of the Pitcairn islanders, in which the males of one race and females of another race were shipwrecked on the island, and lived together for a long time without communication with other people, and it would be important to know the results.

Mr. T. BENDYSHE said that the Pitcairn islanders increased so fast that it was found necessary to remove some of them to Norfolk Island, as they increased so rapidly that they exceeded the means of subsistence. There had been no mixture of other races among them, nor any infusion of new blood. So far, therefore, the evidence of the Pitcairn islanders contradicted the assertion that the progeny of mixed breeds are infertile. With respect to what Mr. Wallace had communicated about the Australians, there was a paper to the same effect inserted in the last number of the proceedings of the Anthropological Society of Paris, which gave an account of the half-breeds of Australia, and represented them to be well developed; and that these half-castes are numerous, notwithstanding all the statements of M. Broca. As to the statement of Count Strzelecki, it was evidently a very baseless assertion. The fact of the matter was, that the halfcaste Australian women were nearly all prostitutes, and therefore they had no children. The fact that the Mamelukes could not propagate their race in Egypt, only showed that the climate of Egypt did not agree with them; and their infertility in that country did not apply to the case of hybridity in general. As to the statements of Dr. Knox, it should be borne in mind that he had taken his instances from the mulattoes in the Slave States of America, where the climate was not favourable for the development of the half-castes. In certain latitudes they would propagate, and in others not.

Mr. JAMES REDDIE remarked on the complexity of the general question of hybridity, and on the want of some more accurate definition of what constitutes a species. The question of the fertility of hybrids, or whether all varieties of the human race now existing can produce a continuously fertile offspring, did not, however, affect the question of the original unity of the human race. He conceived that even Mr. Wallace's suggested experiment would not be satisfactory, even if it could be carried out; for the argument did not depend on