NOT EUGENESIC. 49 



twecn tlie two races should ever become a part of the popu- 

 lation. 



It is, however, not merely in New South Wales that we are 

 struck with the paucity of cross-breeds between Europeans and 

 Australians; Mr. McGillivray mentions a similar fact as re- 

 gards the port of Essingen, an English colony of Northern 

 Australia. 1 



We may, therefore, accept as an authenticated fact, that the 

 cross-breeds between Europeans and native women are very 

 rare in Australia, as they were in Tasmania when the Tasma- 

 nian race existed. 



This fact is so much in opposition to the general opinion on 

 the intermixture of human races, that before attributing it to 

 physiological causes, we must inquire whether it is not owing 

 to some other causes. 



We might be tempted, for instance, to suppose, that there 

 was no intermixture, and that the ugliness and dirty habits of 

 the native women bridled the sexual desire of the Europeans. 

 This has been advanced, not by travellers who have precisely 

 asserted the contraiy, but by honest and sensible reasoners, 

 whose refined taste revolted at the aspect of the portraits and 

 busts of the Australian women. It would be a serious fact 

 that a whole race should have such an irresistible repugnance 

 to another, for nature has only inspired with such a feeling of 

 repulsion beings of different species, and man is certainly of all 

 animals the least exclusive. Is there in our seaports a pros- 

 titute sufficiently ugly and old to frighten the sailor ? Is it 

 not known that the Hottentots, whose ugliness is proverbial, 

 have intermixed with the Europeans of South Africa? We 

 must then set aside such a supposition, which is not founded 

 upon a correct knowledge of human nature. There are, more- 

 over, some documents, which induce us to believe that the 

 Europeans of Australia and Van Diemen's Land have inter- 

 mixed with the native women. 



According to Malte-Brun the population of the colony of 



1 MacGillivray, Narration of the Voyage of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, vol. i, p. 151, 

 1852, cited in Waitz., Anthropologic, p. 203. 



E 



