168 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



distinct branches of a single great race. By that criterion all Europe- 

 ans would be mongrels. That kind of crossing has been going on 

 among us since the dawn of the present geological period. We may 

 begin to trace it through prehistoric times ; and from the birth of his- 

 tory, even in the legendary form, it appears preparing the way for the 

 actual condition of things. This fact alone unequivocally condemns 

 all the theories which ascribe a degrading influence to intermixture 

 considered by itself. 



I refer at present only to mixtures of the white with the negro and 

 other colored races. M. d'Omalius d'Halloy, a Belgian scholar distin- 

 guished for his critical spirit, in the last edition of his " Anthropolo- 

 gy," fixes the population of the globe at twelve hundred millions, and 

 the number of mongrels from crossings of this kind at eighteen mil- 

 lions. Thus the latter already constitute one sixty- sixth of the whole 

 human race. 



The proportion becomes more considerable when we look at some 

 of the states of South America, where the aggregation of circum- 

 stances has favored a mixture of races. Statistics already several 

 years old show in Mexico, Guatemala, Colombia, the La Plata, and 

 Brazil, a total of 16,040,100 inhabitants, of whom 3,333,000 are mon- 

 grels. The latter, then, form about one fifth of the population. This 

 proportion, high as it is, is really too small, for, since the censuses 

 from which the numbers were borrowed were taken, the mixture of 

 races has increased ; again, many persons of mixed blood have been 

 counted as whites. In these countries any one who rises to an honor- 

 able position in society can call himself a white, and no one will refuse 

 him the privilege. I know of a family in the best society of one of 

 the Central American states, in which the negro and Indian blood are 

 notably mixed. All of its members pretend to be pure whites and pass 

 for such, and a person who should express any doubt on the subject 

 would be very badly received. 



The inhabitants of the province of Sao Paulo in Brazil are nearly 

 all the mixed issue of marriages contracted by the Portuguese and by 

 whites from the Azores with the native tribes, the Carijos and the 

 Guayanazos. 



These facts are significant. They become more so when we recol- 

 lect how short a time has been necessary to produce such results. In 

 South and Central America, and Mexico, the crossing has been going 

 on on an extensive scale only since the conquest of Mexico and Peru, 

 between 1519 and 1533. Less than three centuries and a half separate 

 us from that e])och and what are three centuries in the history of 

 mankind ? It is easy to believe that in three centuries more the 

 mixture will be complete in that part of the New World. 



Are the United States and Canada the theatre of ethnogenic phe- 

 nomena analogous to those which we have just proved to exist in the 

 countries south of them ? The contrary is generally asserted. We 



