338 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



quoted at random the various preceding examples, to show how the 

 most extreme types of mankind have contributed to form a certain 

 number of races. Need I insist upon the mixtures which have been 

 accomplished between the secondary types derived from the first ? In 

 Europe what population can pretend to purity of blood? The 

 Basques themselves, who apparently ought to be well protected by 

 their country, institutions, and language, against the invasion of for- 

 eign blood, show upon certain points, in the heart of their mountains, 

 the evident traces of the juxtaposition and fusion of very different 

 races. As for the other nations, ranging from Lapland to the Medi- 

 terranean, classical history, although it does not go back for a great 

 distance in point of time, is a sufficient proof that crossings are the 

 inevitable result of invasions, wars, and political and social events. 

 Asia presents, as we know, the same spectacle ; and, in the heart of 

 Africa, the Gagas, playing the part of the horde of Genghis-Khan, have 

 mixed together the African tribes from one ocean to the other." * 



Turning now from the past to the present, let us briefly inquire 

 whether, where, and to what extent the intercrossing of the human 

 races is going on in our own generation. And let us begin with our 

 own hemisphere. 



In a recent article in this magazine,f Professor Rudolph Virchow 

 directed attention to what he terms " a delicate ethnological problem " 

 — " the peculiar physiology of the Yankee." " That type," he says, 

 " is not wholly comparable either with the English or the German, or 

 with a cross of the two with the Irish race." He implies, rather than 

 asserts, that its distinctive features are due to the transforming influ- 

 ence of climate, nor does he hint that it might be the result of a 

 tinge of aboriginal blood. In another portion of the same paper he 

 expresses the belief that, however mixed, the population of the United 

 States must remain Aryan at bottom, heterogeneous elements being 

 absorbed without leaving a trace. The problem is certainly interest- 

 ing, even if we have regard merely to the stage of development that 

 has been reached, and study American characteristics as compared 

 with those of any of the European races that have had a share in the 

 making of the nation. But its interest is intensified when we survey 

 the scattered groups — white and black and red and yellow — whose 

 amalgamation into one vast community may be the work of years to 

 come. 



The opinion prevails that north of the Gulf of Mexico the fusion 

 of European and Indian blood has hitherto been extremely rare. Dr. 

 Daniel "Wilson believes, on the other hand, that, to a great extent, 

 what has been taken for the extinction of the Indians has been sim- 

 ply their absorption, and that " they are disappearing as a race, in 

 part at least, by the same process by which the German, the Swede, 



* " The Human Species " (" International Scientific Series "), pp. 273, 274. 

 f "Acclimatization," in " The Popular Science Monthly," February, 1886. 



