NOT EUGENESIC. 57 



in the human species is, at any rate, still doubtful, and the 

 connexion of facts of this kind, with Strzelecki's assertion, is 

 yet more questionable. We must also observe that Strzelecki, 

 in pointing out the barrenness of savage women who have co- 

 habited with the Whites, does not merely speak of such who 

 have produced Mulattoes, but applies equally to those women 

 who had not given birth to any children ; and if Mr. Harvey 

 had taken the exact meaning of the text, he might, perhaps, 

 not have advanced his theory. 



The observations of M. de Strzelecki, though made in various 

 regions, have been published in a work on Australia. It was 

 thought that he spoke especially of the native women of New 

 South Wales, and it was more from that country that more in- 

 formation was expected on that subject. Mr. Heywood Thom- 

 son, a surgeon of the English navy, took up the question, and 

 sent to the Edinburgh Monthly Journal an article tending to 

 refute Strzelecki's assertion. This article effectively shows 

 that Strzelecki's opinion was far too general. The author 

 states, that he had known a colonist of the Macquarie river, 

 who communicated to him the following fact : One of his 

 convict servants had a child born him by an Australian woman, 

 who subsequently returned to her own tribe, had then a second 

 child by a native man. Mr. Thomson states, that other in- 

 stances of the kind had occurred in the colony ; and he strikes 

 a fatal blow at Mr. Harvey's theory by adding, that the Austra- 

 lian women who have for a certain time cohabited with the 

 Whites, are not more prolific with them than with the natives. 

 But though Mr. Thomson has endeavoured to prove that the 

 cohabitation with Europeans does not necessarily render Austra- 

 lian women barren with men of their own race, he acknowledges 

 that such a result is very common. He admits it as a fact 

 which cannot be contested, 1 and considers it so certain that he 

 tries to explain it, by attributing it to the following causes : 



1. The European who has cohabited with an Australian 



1 Thomas E. Heywood Thomson, on the " Eeported Incompetency of the 

 Aboriginal Females of New Holland to Procreate with Native Males after 

 having Children by a European or White," in Monthly Journal of Medical 

 Science, Edinburgh, Oct. 1851, vol. xii, p. 354. 



