HUMAN CROSSES 269 



far as present information goes the results have been excellent 

 both biologically and sociologically. It is to be hoped that 

 some student of eugenics will give the case careful and 

 critical study. 



Another successful experiment in human racial crossing has 

 been recently studied and described by a German, Fischer,^ 

 who chronicles the origin of a tribe in Gennan Southwest 

 Africa of mixed Boer and Hottentot blood. This arose from 

 the intermarriage with native Hottentots of a few Boers dis- 

 satisfied with British rule in South Africa, who penetrated 

 far northward among hostile tribes, and were thus forced to 

 combine with each other against a common enemy. Their 

 descendants, intermarrying, formed a distinct cultural group 

 entirely surrounded by pure native stocks and wholly isolated 

 from contact with Europeans. Pride in their ancestry and 

 cultural inheritance held them together and prevented mix- 

 ing with neighboring tribes. After this had gone on for 

 several generations they came within the German zone of 

 colonial influence (again British at present under the fortune 

 of war). Very likely the group as such will presently dis- 

 appear, but the experiment has progressed far enough to 

 show that under conditions which do not interfere with 

 cultural inheritance crossing of racial stocks as widely sepa- 

 rated as Europeans and Africans has no evil consequences, 

 but produces a vigorous, sound race. Fischer finds evidence 

 of Mendelian inheritance of physical characters among these 

 people, but critically examined, this evidence is substantially 

 like that available from other sources. Some characters, 

 such as hair and eye-colors show fairly good segregation. As 

 regards skin-color, proportions of the skeleton, features, etc., 

 the hybrids are intermediate between the parent races, but 

 more variable. It is probable that intelligence and other 

 psychic traits are inherited in this way. 



Racial crosses, if so conducted as not to interfere with 

 social inheritance, may be expected to produce on the whole 

 intermediates as regards physical and psychic characters. 



1 " Die Rhehobothen Bastarden," 1911. 



