VARIETIES OF MANKIND. 



1341 



although formal marriages take place at a very 

 early age throughout India, the custom is so 

 far modified in the Dekhan, that consummation 

 is not effected until after the first menstruation 

 has appeared. 



The frequency of the catamemal flux, and 

 the epoch of life to ivhich it extends, appear 

 from Mr. Roberton's inquiries, to be no less 

 constant among different races. It is quite 

 true that the period of child-bearing is sooner 

 terminated among the women of many tribes, 

 especially in tropical climates, than it usually 

 is in this country ; but this is fairly attri- 

 butable to the earlier marriages, and the con- 

 sequently premature excitement of the gene- 

 rative power, of which its earlier decline is the 

 natural consequence. The same is continually 

 seen in this country. The marked difference 

 in this respect, that arises out of laws and 

 customs affecting the marriage state, is shown 

 by the fact, that in India the mean age for a 

 first parturition is 15^ years, whilst among 

 500 Manchester female operatives, tabulated 

 by Mr. Roberton, the mean age was found to 

 be 23 years. Some very curious evidence 

 has been collected by that gentleman, which 

 goes to prove that marriages nearly as pre- 

 mature as those of Hindoo females were for- 

 merly sanctioned by law and public opinion 

 in this country; and that in Ireland they 

 have been by no means (infrequent within a 

 recent period. 



The duration of pregnancy is well known to 

 be the same throughout all the races of man- 

 kind ; and this is a fact of peculiar importance, 

 as a difference in this respect is elsewhere 

 observable between species that are in other 

 respects closely allied. 



The fertility of hybrid races, originating in 

 the intermixture of two races whose affinity 

 is most remote, is a fact of which there can 

 be no doubt whatever ; and there is strong 

 reason to believe that those hybrid races, the 

 parents of which are Europeans on one side, 

 and the aborigines of any country on the 

 other, are generally destined to become the 

 dominant population of those countries. For, 

 on the one hand, these " half-castes " very 

 commonly combine the best attributes of the 

 two races from whose admixture they sprang; 

 namely, the intelligence and mental activity of 

 the European, and the climatic adaptation of 

 the native.* And they are also in general 

 distinguished for their fertility, when paired 

 with each other, so that they are rapidly 

 rising into numerical importance. On the 

 other hand, this very intermixture, taking 

 place as it usually does between an European 

 father and a native mother, tends to di- 

 minish the number of the native population 

 in a very remarkable manner ; for there is 

 now a large amount of evidence, that when a 

 native female of the American or Polynesian 

 races has once been impregnated by an 

 European male, she thenceforth loses all 

 power of conception from intercourse with 



* This is well seen in the case of the descendants 

 of the mutineers of the Bounty and of Tahitiau 

 women, who now occupy Pitcairn's Island. 



the male of her own race. This was first 

 pointedly stated by that very intelligent tra- 

 veller, the Count de Strzelecki, who has 

 lived much among different races of abo- 

 rigines, the natives of Canada, of the United 

 States, of California, Mexico, the South 

 American Republics, the Marquesas, Sand- 

 wich, and Society Islands, New Zealand, and 

 Australia, and who affirms that in hundreds oj 

 canes of this kind into which he has inquired, 

 and of which he preserves memoranda, there 

 has not been a single exception.* 



As regards Australia and New Zealand, 

 this statement, strange as it seems at first 

 sight, has been fully borne out by independent 

 evidence ; and it offers the most complete 

 explanation yet given, of the very rapid de- 

 crease in the native population of the various 

 islands of Oceania, in which European races 

 have been long established. Nothing pre- 

 cisely analogous is known in any other 

 case. Instances of the influence of the father 

 of a first offspring upon subsequent off- 

 spring by another father, are so frequent, 

 as to have given rise to a current be- 

 lief among the breeders of domesticated 

 animals, that such is the fact ; and the very 

 ingenious hypothesis has been suggested by 

 Mr. M'Gillivray, and ably advocated by Dr. 

 Harvey, that the female parent in such a case 

 becomes inoculated with the qualities of the 

 male, through the blood of the foetus, which 

 partakes of the latter. But there is no known 

 case, in which impregnation of a female by a 

 male of a different species or variety has ren- 

 dered her subsequently infertile to males of 

 her own ; on the contrary, the facts just re- 

 ferred to, as to the extension of the influence 

 of the first father over the subsequent progeny, 

 indicate that such is not the case. Hence 

 this peculiarity affords no ground whatever 

 for the establishment of a specific distinction 

 between the two races ; and the invalidity of 

 such a distinction is at once indicated by the 

 fact, that the peculiarity in question does not 

 hold good in regard to the African races, the 

 fertility of the Negro female with the male of 

 her own race not being apparently impaired 

 by 'previous fruitful intercourse with the 

 European male, a kind of intercourse which 

 is notoriously common in the West India 

 Islands, and in the slave-holding states of 

 North and South America.-)- 



* See the Count de Strzelecki's Physical Descrip- 

 tion of New South Wales and Van Dieman's Land, 

 pp. 345 347. ; and Dr. Harvey's Papers on the In- 

 oculation of the Maternal System with the Pecu- 

 liarities of the Paternal, through the Foetus in 

 Utero, in the Kdinb. Monthly Journal for October, 

 1849, and October and November, 1850. 



f It may be, as suggested by Dr. Harvey (loc. 

 cit.), that the final purpose of this curious provision 

 should be to replace the least improvable races by a 

 population of a much higher order; the aboriginals 

 thus becoming extinct without violence, but in the 

 natural course of things; and their places being oc- 

 cupied either by half-breeds or Europeans. And, 

 on the other hand, the immunity of the Negro may 

 be designed to preserve his tenure of those parts of 

 the earth, whether in subserviency to the European 

 or independently of him, where, by reason of the 



