The Laws of Heredity. 



153 



father and that of the mother, each represented by a fraction, are 

 supposed to be equal in the production of the half-breed. But 

 this hypothesis, as expressed in the following table, is altogether 

 theoretic. 



WHITE AND BLACK. 



But, in fact, cross-breeding does not by any means proceed with 

 such mathematical regularity. Not to speak of the numerous 

 cases in which the union of white and black results in a child 

 entirely black, or entirely white, in half-breeds there is always a 

 preponderance of one or other of the parents. Burmeister, one of 

 the closest observers of the mulattoes of South America and of 

 the West Indian Islands, denies that the mulatto is exactly the 

 mean between his two parents. In the immense majority of cases, 

 his characters are borrowed from both races, but one of them is 

 always predominant, and that usually the negro race. Pruner 

 Bey, who has carefully studied the mulattoes in Egypt and Arabia, 

 passes the same judgment. He observes the marked predomi- 

 nance of the negro type. It is manifest in the curly, woolly hair ; in 

 the general form and dimensions of the skull ; in the forehead, 

 usually low and slightly receding ; in the conformation of the feet, 

 and in a prognathism which scarcely ever disappears in the first 

 generation. 



