UliAP. VII. 



The Races of Man. 



171 



asserts that lie has known mulatto families which have inter- 

 married for several generations, and have continued on an 

 average as fertile as either pure whites or pure blacks. Enquiries 

 formerly made by Sir C. Lyell on this subject led him, as he 

 informs me, to the same conclusion. 12 In the United States the 

 census for the year 1854 included, according to Dr. Bachman, 

 •105,751 mulattoes ; and this number, considering all the circum- 

 stances of the case, seems small ; but it may partly be accounted 

 for by the degraded and anomalous position of the class, and by 

 the profligacy of the women. A certain amount of absorption of 

 mulattoes into negroes must always be in progress ; and this 

 would lead to an apparent diminution of the former. The inferior 

 vitality of mulattoes is spoken of in a trustworthy work 13 as a 

 well-known phenomenon ; and this, although a different considera- 

 tion from their lessened fertility, may perhaps be advanced as 

 a proof of the specific distinctness of the parent races. No doubt 

 both animal and vegetable hybrids, when produced from extremely 

 distinct species, are liable to premature death; but the parents 

 of mulattoes cannot be put under the category of extremely 

 distinct species. The common Mule, so notorious for long life 

 and vigour, and yet so sterile, shews how little necessary con- 

 nection there is in hybrids between lessened fertility and vitality ; 

 other analogous cases could be cited. 



Even if it should hereafter be proved that all the races of 

 men were perfectly fertile together, he who was inclined from 

 other reasons to rank them as distinct species, might with justice 

 argue that fertility and sterility are not safe criterions of specific 

 distinctness. We know that these qualities are easily affected 

 by changed conditions of life, or by close inter-breeding, and that 

 they are governed by highly complex laws, for instance, that of 

 the unequal fertility of converse crosses between the same two 

 species. With forms which must be ranked as undoubted 

 species, a perfect series exists from those which are absolutely 

 sterile when crossed, to those which are almost or completely 



vinces of the Animal World,' Charles- 

 ton, 1855, p. 44. 



12 Dr. Rohlfs writes to me that 

 he found the mixed races in the 

 Great Sahara, derived from Arabs, 

 Berbers, and Negroes of three tribes, 

 extraordinarily fertile. On the other 

 hand, Mr. VYinwood Reade informs 

 ine that the Negroes on the Gold 

 "oast, though admiring white men 

 and mulattoes, have a maxim that 

 mulattoes should not intermarry, as 



the children are few and sickly. 

 This belief, as Mr. Reade remarks, 

 deserves attention, as white men 

 have visited and resided on the Gold 

 Coast for four hundred years, so 

 that the natives have had ample 

 time to gun knowledge through 

 experience. 



13 ' Military and Anthropolog. 

 Statistics of American Soldiers,' by 

 B. A. Gould, 18G9, p. 319. 



