166 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



THE CKOSSING OF THE HUMAN KACES.* 



Bt m. a. de quatkefages. 



THE movement of expansion which followed the geographical dis- 

 coveries of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries has resulted in 

 transporting to a host of points on the globe not only the European 

 white but also the African negro, who was first carried away into slavery. 

 Everywhere the two races have crossed with each other and with the 

 natives of the place ; and everywhere, in consequence of these unions 

 of the two races, mixed populations have appeared, having in varied 

 proportions the blood of the whites, the negroes, and the local races. 

 This is a remarkable fact, which has engaged the attention of travelers, 

 but which the founders of anthropology Buffon, Blumenbach, and 

 Prichard and most of their successors, seem to have passed over. I 

 have often pointed out this singular omission, and indicated the causes 

 of it, the chief of which is that those writers were without the docu- 

 ments bearing on the subject which we possess now. I have also tried 

 to fill the gap in the investigation, and, after having studied the phe- 

 nomena from a general point of view, have shown, I believe, how the 

 study of what has passed and of what is passing now throws light on 

 the origin of populations which are often considered as of a pure race, 

 and how an attentive study may enable us to discover traces of a cross- 

 ing sometimes too ancient for the remembrance of it to survive, some- 

 times on the contrary recent enough to permit us to recover historical 

 evidence of it. I have endeavored also to indicate what may be the 

 consequences in the future of contemporary facts. 



The conclusions to which this study has led me are in direct disa- 

 greement with those of some anthropologists, and in particular with 

 the doctrines advanced by Dr. Nott, the Count de Gobineau, Dr. Per- 

 rier, Messrs. David, Turnham, Knox, etc. Without repeating the con- 

 siderations I have already advanced concerning these differences of 

 opinion, I will here point out what the differences are. Those who 

 disagree with me affirm more or less explicitly that crossing between 

 human races is of itself a cause of decline, and that, when two unequal 

 races intermarry, the mixed population is fatally inferior to both. In 

 the crossing of unequal races the superior is depressed, they say, with- 

 out raising the inferior. The mixed race is more or less degraded 

 physically, and is deprived of all disposition to work, of all moral 

 force. 



Most of the adversaries of crossing still maintain that the forma- 

 tion of a new race resulting from the union of two other races is really 

 impossible. Populations originating thus can not be kept up, they 



* Translated and abridged from the " Revue Scientifique." 



