176 HUMAN BIOLOGY 



be unprofitable, and also more or less uncertain. There is a 

 need of much further study in this field, and that by experts. 

 The subraces and types and nascent racial entities must be 

 determined scientificially country by country, which will 

 take yet a long time to be accomplished. Within late years 

 there was a hope that the agglutinin tests of the blood 

 might be helpful, if not decisive, in racial classification, 

 but that hope has in a large measure failed. Recently new 

 and more thorough chemical tests of the blood (See Am. 

 J. Phys. Anthrop., 1927.) have been devised and may 

 effect more in this direction. Though it must always be 

 remembered that human races are variable and unstable 

 units, much admixed, merging more or less with other 

 racial groups, and without any true lines of demarcation, 

 in blood or any other particular. 



MIXTURE OF RACES 



Human races without exception are freely miscible, which 

 has always been one of the stronger arguments against their 

 being true species. Human intermarriage has now been 

 observed in all parts of the world, and, barring cases due to 

 purely individual causes, there are no instances of sterility, 

 weakness of the offspring, or eventual extinction of the 

 mixed bloods. 



A popular fallacy met with occasionally to this day in the 

 more southern parts of the United States, is that the prog- 

 eny of the white and the negro will not survive or breed 

 beyond the quadroon or at most the octoroon. Actual 

 observation has completely failed to sustain these opinions. 

 It may be said unreservedly that, except where disease 

 enters into the case, there is no known limit to the fecundity 

 of the white-black progeny. And the same applies apparently 

 to the mixbloods of any other two or more races. 



Another widely held view outside of science is that the 

 results of race mixture are generally bad. This view, also, 

 is not sustainable by critical observation. It may be said, 

 as a rule, that the results of a normal union of two healthy 

 units of whatever races, followed by a wholesome care to the 

 children, will result in a normal and healthy progeny. If 

 such a union occurs between two mentally unequal races, 



