22 HYBKIDITY OF THE HUMAN SPECIES. 



every day in intelligence, prosperity, and numbers. Ever since 

 the revolution has broken the last obstacle which opposed 

 themselves to the mixture of races, and despite of the gigantic 

 wars which during twenty-five years mowed down the 6lite of 

 its male population, France has seen the number of its inhabi- 

 tants increase by more than one-third ; this is not a symptom 

 of decay. Dr. Knox, in his curious essay on the Races of 

 Men (London, 1850), has thought proper to utter, in relation 

 to the French, some hard truths : and also some calumnies, 

 which we shall put to the account of his patriotism. Mr. 

 Knox has accorded to the French nation an increasing physi- 

 cal prosperity, and as this side of the question is the only one 

 which occupies us here, we might dispense with any other 

 testimony. That learned author thought what he said about 

 the French applied exclusively to the Celtic race ; he supposed 

 that upon our soil there were nought but pure Celts, and that 

 the other ethnological elements have not in any degree modi- 

 fied the character of the old Gallic race. I have refuted this 

 assertion at some length in my Mdmoire sur V Ethnologie de la 

 France, and Dr. Knox, 1 in praising in his own manner the 

 Celtic race, has not perceived that unconsciously, and contrary 

 to his own system, he wrote the apology of a strongly mixed 

 race. But the partisans of this system will doubtless say that, 

 on the whole, the mixed Kimro-Celtic race, which now inhabits 

 France, does not subsist by itself ; that the two parent races, the 

 Celts and the Kimris, one of which predominates in the north- 

 east, the other in the north-west, the south and the centre 

 persist, almost pure, in their respective regions, and that the 

 mixed race only maintains itself by recruiting themselves in- 

 cessantly in these vivacious foci. My reply to this is, that the 

 individuals perfectly representing the Celtic or Kimri type are 

 infinitely rarer than the rest, even in the departments where 

 history or observation demonstrates that the influence of one 

 of these races is altogether preponderant. They are especially 

 rare in the districts of the intermediary zone, which I have 

 termed Kimro-Celtic, and where the two chief races have origi- 



1 Knox, The Races of Man. 8vo, London, 1850. 



