264 Dr Morton on Hybrid Animals and Plants. 



Let us now proceed to examine the question before us, 

 commencing with the larger mammiferous animals, and pro- 

 ceeding from these to birds, fishes, insects, and plants. 



Equine Hybrids. — The common mule, the progeny of the 

 ass and mare, has been familiar to man since the days of 

 Homer ; and it is equally well known that with this animal, 

 the hybrid form, as a general rule, begins and terminates. 

 But the result appears to depend much on temperature ; for 

 in the south of Spain, mules have often been observed to 

 produce young ; and M. de la Malle observes that this phe- 

 nomenon is frequent in hot climates, in which their period of 

 gestation is twelve months, being the same as that of the 

 mare. The same author quotes from Columella, the remark 

 of Mago, a Carthagenian agriculturalist, that in his country 

 the fecundity of the mule was a frequent event, although it 

 was regarded as a prodigy in Greece and Italy. He adds, 

 that these mixed mules do not cross again with each other, 

 but only with the primitive species that has given them 

 birth.* 



The ancients gave the name ginnus to the offspring of the 



may render it probable that what are now termed the jive, races of men, would 

 be more appropriately called groups ; that each of these groups is again divi- 

 sible into a greater or smaller number of primary races, each of which has ex- 

 panded from an aboriginal nucleus or centre. Thus I conceive that there were 

 several centres for the American group of races, of which the highest in the 

 scale are the Toltecan nations, the lowest the Fuegians. Kor does this view 

 conflict with the general principle, that all these nations and tribes have had, 

 as I have elsewhere expressed it, a common origin ; inasmuch as by this term 

 is only meant an indigenous relation to the country they inhabit, and that col- 

 lective identity of physical traits, mental and moral endowments, languages, 

 &c., which characterize all the American races. The same remarks are appli- 

 cable to all the other human races ; but in the present infant state of Ethno- 

 graphic science, the designation of these primitive centres is a task of equal 

 delicacy and difficulty. I may here observe, that whenever I have ventured 

 an opinion on this question, it has been in favour of the doctrine of 2)rimeval 

 diversities among men, — an original adaptation of the several races to those 

 varied circumstances of climate and locality, which, while congenial to the one 

 are destructive to the other; and subsequent investigations have confirmed me 

 in these views. See Crania Americana, p. 3 ; Crania uEgyptica, p. 37 ; and 

 Distinctive Characteristics of the Aboriginal Race of America, p. 36. 

 * M. de la Malle, Ann. des Sciences Nat., xxvii, p. 235. 



