460 



3d, When races, like those of Britain, or Europe in general, ap- 

 proximate closely to each other. These three circumstances the 

 author discussed in succession. 



1st, When races widely differ from each other, as in the crossing 

 of the horse and the ass. In this case, nature has ever declared, 

 that a debased or intermediate breed shall not be perpetuated. 



2d, When races are in a less degree remote. In this example 

 nature acts with uniformity, as in the crossing of the spaniel with the 

 greyhound, &c. ; and, among the human species, in the mixture of 

 European and black races. In any one of these instances, there 

 is no incapacity in the progeny to perpetuate its breed ; but it will 

 be found that the principle directed to the persistence of races gra- 

 dually restores, in the course of a few generations, the purity of any 

 one of the types which may have been contaminated by mixture, 

 while the other type, in the meantime, is doomed to extinction. 



3d, When races approximate closely to each other, as when 

 spaniels (of which there are divei's breeds), are crossed among them- 

 selves, and the same of white and gi'ey mice, the result shews that, 

 in the progeny, the types of a paternal or maternal stock are less 

 liable to occur in an intermediate, than in a perfectly distinct form ; 

 or, in other words, that there is a less tendency to a fusion than to 

 a separation of types. For instance, in the Western Highlands of 

 Scotland, which were peopled in succession by the dark-haired Gael, 

 and the flaxen-haired Scandinavian, there is, in the descendants, 

 less a mixture than a separation of the types ; the progeny of many 

 families of the peasanti-y illustrating the distinctness with which 

 Gaelic and Scandinavian characters are reproduced in cases where 

 the paternal and maternal types differ from each other. 



In bringmg forward these illustrations, it was far from being 

 argued that a progeny did not often exhibit an intermediate charac- 

 ter, derived from the two races of a paternal and maternal stock ; it 

 was simply urged that a separation of types is equally, if not more 

 common ; and that, when a sort of intermediate character is ac- 

 tually derived from two European races, it is not necessarily per- 

 petuated to a future progeny. On the contrary, a pure and distinct 

 type, even though rendered, for a generation or two, intermediate 

 and obscure, is often revived, with all its primitive decision of cha- 

 racter. 



The author, lastly, availed himself of the occasion to state, that 

 the laws which appertained to the characters of races, hold good also 

 with individual distinctions ; and that nature seemed far more intent 



