WHAT WE MIGHT EXPECT. 181 



ideas, would thus directly and most markedly affect the 

 reproductive system. Every reader of Mr. Darwin will 

 know that this is what actually happens, and also that 

 when once a plant or animal begins to vary, it will pro- 

 bably vary a good deal further ; which, again, is what we 

 should expect — the disturbance of the memory intro- 

 ducing a fresh factor of disturbance, which has to be 

 dealt with by the offspring as it best may. Mr. Darwin 

 writes: "All our domesticated productions, with the 

 rarest exceptions, vary far more than natural species " 

 ("Plants and Animals," &c, vol. ii. p. 241, ed. 1875). 



On my third supposition, i.e., when the difference 

 between parents has not been great enough to baffle 

 reproduction on the part of the first cross, but when 

 the histories of the father and mother have been, never- 

 theless, widely different — as in the case of Europeans 

 and Indians — we should expect to have a race of off- 

 spring who should seem to be quite clear only about 

 those points, on which their progenitors on both sides 

 were in accord before the manifold divergencies in their 

 experiences commenced; that is to say, the offspring 

 should show a tendency to revert to an early savage 

 condition. 



That this indeed occurs may be seen from Mr. Dar- 

 win's " Plants and Animals under Domestication " (vol 

 ii. p. 21, ed. 1875), where we find that travellers in all 

 parts of the world have frequently remarked "on the 

 degraded state and savage condition of crossed races of 

 man!' A few lines lower down Mr. Darwin tells us 

 that he was himself "struck with the fact that, in 

 South America, men of complicated descent between 



