390 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



the other members of his family. To be metaphorical once more, one 

 may say that a Robinson differs from a Jones because he is a mixture 

 of brown peas and white peas ; whereas one Jones differs from another 

 in being a particular mixture of red beans and black beans, differently 

 arranged in each case. 



Next after the similarity between brothers and sisters or other 

 blood-relations, we may expect to find the similarity between the off- 

 spring of the same class in the same community, similarly situated : 

 and this the more so in proportion to the average identity of their 

 several lives. For example, one would naturally expect that our own 

 agricultural laborers, all engaged in much the same sort of work and 

 surrounded by much the same sort of objects, would produce by in- 

 termarriage very similar children. Still more would this be the case 

 among very homogeneous savages, such as the Esquimaux or the South 

 American Indians. And where the identity of pursuits is very great 

 on both sides, and in all individuals, as among the Fuegians, the Ved- 

 dahs, the Andamanese, we should expect to find a great likeness of 

 physique and character between all the offspring. 



Conversely, where marriages take place between persons of differ- 

 ent races, or very differently situated, we may look for great differ- 

 ences between the offspring, especially when compared with those of 

 marriages between relatively homogeneous persons. Under such cir- 

 cumstances, the children tend more or less, though very irregularly, 

 to present a mean between the two parents. Thus, to take the most 

 obvious instance, the average mulatto is half-way as a rule between 

 the negro and the European, physically at least, though, for various 

 reasons to be considered hereafter, it often happens that he is more 

 than the equal in intelligence of the average white. But even in the 

 same family of mulattoes great differences exist between the children. 

 Some will be darker, others lighter ; some will be curlier-headed, others 

 straighter-haired ; some will have prognathous faces and depressed 

 noses, others will have more regular features and more prominent 

 noses. So far as my observation goes, too, it does not always happen 

 that the most European physical type has the most European mind: 

 on the contrary, high intelligence often accompanies a very African 

 physique, while English features may be concomitant with a truly 

 negro incapacity for logical reasoning, generalization, or elementary 

 mathematical ideas. It seems as though in each part there was a 

 struggle for supremacy between the two types : and the one type may 

 apparently carry the day in certain external peculiarities, while the 

 other type carries the day in the more intimate arrangements of the 

 nervous system. At the same time, I can not myself doubt that there 

 must be a very intimate connection between every one of the sense- 

 organs and the brain ; and I can hardly believe that prognathism and 

 other like physical peculiarities do not imply various correlated nerv- 

 ous facts of great psychological importance. Though, in the result- 



