18 HYBRIDITY OF THE HUMAN SPECIES. 



races, and to recognise the more or less marked and dominant 

 impress of the Celts, Kimris, Romans, and Germans. I was 

 even enabled, on the statistics of recruiting, to give to my 

 inquiries, in regard to stature, a rigorous precision. I cannot 

 in this place enter into any details : I am obliged to refer the 

 reader to the Memoir, which is published by the Anthropologi- 

 cal Society. In point of fact, it was merely because eminent 

 men have for some years doubted the existence of eugenesic 

 hybridity in mankind, that it became necessary to demonstrate 

 so evident a proposition, that the population of France in at 

 least nineteen-twentieths of our territory, presents in unequal 

 degrees the characters of mixed races. 



This single example might suffice ; but I have no doubt that 

 by examining in a similar manner the historical origin and the 

 actual condition of the peoples of Northern Italy, Southern 

 Germany, Great Britain not to speak of the United States, 

 where the fusion of blood is probably inexplicable it might be 

 demonstrated with equal certainty, that these different races 

 have given birth, by their intermixture, to ethnological modifi- 

 cations still recognisable. In all these countries is the instability 

 of anthropological characters in contrast with the fixity which 

 is the mark of pure races ; and we might say, without fear of 

 error, that the greater part of Western Europe is inhabited by 

 mixed races. 



Moreover, the authors who have denied the existence of 

 mixed races, have not denied that there are in Europe and else- 

 where, numerous vivacious populations, formed by the inter- 

 mixture of two or several distinct races. They merely asserted 

 that mongrel breeds, whatever their origin, were necessarily 

 inferior in reference to fecundity to individuals of pure blood, 

 and that their direct descendants would become extinct after a 

 few generations, unless they contracted new alliances with the 

 mother races, or at least with one of them. If we object to 

 this, that the mixed populations possess everywhere, as those 

 of France and Great Britain, a vitality and fecundity which 

 leaves nothing to be desired, they reply that this proves nothing ; 

 that the cross breeds are prolific in a collateral line, as is ob- 

 served in cases of paragenesic hybridity, and they add that two 

 cases may present themselves : 



