Heredity and the Law of Evolution. 299 



There are other half-breeds, however, who are at least equal in 

 point of intellect to their parents of the superior race. In 1789, 

 nine English sailors mutinied, deserted their captain, and settled 

 on Pitcairn Island with six Tahitans and fifteen Polynesian women. 

 A quarrel soon arose among them. Five of the white men were 

 killed, and the women murdered the Tahitans. The four white men 

 and the ten surviving women lived in a complete state of polygamy. 

 Strife broke out afresh . between the four Europeans. Two were 

 killed, and the remaining two resolved to live in peace, and to 

 regenerate this little community, born amid an outburst of every 

 wild passion. Captain Beechy visited the island in 1825; he found 

 there a population of sixty-six individuals, remarkable for their fine 

 proportions, their strength, their agility, their quick and ready in- 

 telligence, their great desire for instruction and for moral qualities, 

 of which he gives a touching example. This community, con- 

 sisting entirely of half-breeds, was superior at least to the vast 

 majority of the elements which had given birth to it 



In Brazil, where, as the prejudices of colour are less strong than 

 elsewhere, half-breeds may aspire to position in society, they have 

 shown a decided artistic superiority over the two original races. 

 ' Nearly every painter and musician in Brazil is a half-breed. 

 They possess, also, a turn for science, and many of them have 

 become medical practitioners of high distinction.' 



In Venezuela, says M. de Quatrefages, mulattoes have been dis- 

 tinguished as orators, publicists, and poets. One of them, formerly 

 Vice-President of New Grenada, was a prominent writer and a 

 good administrative officer. 



Authors who are by no means favourable to half-breeds admit 

 that, particularly in America, they possess considerable intelligence, 

 wit, and imagination. 



We can draw no decisive conclusion from these facts, to which 

 we might easily add many others ; not so much because the 

 opinions are mutually contradictory, as because they are vague. 

 Anthropologists, who usually are so minute and exact in their 

 physiological distinctions, so soon as they come to consider mental 

 characters, the complexity of which is so great, confine themselves 

 to general phrases, which are almost always the same. Some 

 naturalists, however, have supposed that from all these facts of 



