THE HUMAN SPECIES. 119 



Reverting to Buffon's experiment of breeding be- 

 tween the wolf and dog, intended by him more with a 

 view to ascertain the reality of their common origin, or 

 specifical identity, and by Frederick Cuvier pointed out 

 as solved, because, according to his view, it established 

 an increasing sterility in the successive generations, we 

 have already stated, that neither sufficient care nor con- 

 tinuity was given to the experiment; and that one 

 single pair, of homogeneous origin, continuing propa- 

 gation through successive offspring, without a single 

 cross of renovating blood, would, in all probability, end 

 in similar sterility, or at least in sensible degradation. 

 Hence it remains to be proved, whether it would not 

 hold equally between two such dissimilar forms of Man, 

 as a typical African negro and an European, conducted 

 upon the same principle, of admitting no intermixture 

 of a single collateral.* We doubt, exceedingly, if a 

 mulatto family does, or could exist, in any part of the 

 tropics, continued to a fourth generation, from one 

 stock : perhaps there is not even one of five genera- 

 tions of positive mulattoes (hybrids in the first degree), 

 from different parents, but that all actually require, 

 for continuity at least, a long previous succession of 

 foreign influences of white or negro, mestise, quartroon, 

 sambo, native Indian, or Malay blood, before the sinew 



* It is even pretended, by many white colonists, that no 

 negro woman, having born a mulatto child, is ever after the 

 mother of a black ! She becomes, they say, in that respect, 

 sterile. But surely this must be very doubtful, although 

 our researches do not invalidate the assertion. 



