EUGENESIC HYBRIDITY. 21 



their children perish in the first or second generation. The 

 Ottomans are nearly in the same condition, and it is observed 

 that they only preserve themselves from the same fate by 

 marrying indigenous females what the Mamelukes have always 

 disdained. (The wives of the Mamelukes were, like their slaves, 

 imported from Georgia, Mongrelia, etc.) Let it now be ex- 

 plained why well formed men, married to healthy women, 

 cannot naturalise on the borde-rs of the Nile a blood formed at 

 the foot of the Caucasus ! We are at the same time reminded 

 that European plants equally refuse to perpetuate their species 

 in that locality." 1 Despite the precision of this passage, many 

 Mamelukes no doubt took wives and numerous concubines from 

 the indigenous population. It is difficult to believe that it 

 could have been otherwise, and Grliddon had a right to say, that 

 if the offspring of the two races had been prolific, there would 

 inevitably have been produced in Egypt a mixed race. But 

 the fact revealed by Volney, which is perfectly authentic, still 

 maintains its force, namely, that the Mamelukes, by the simple 

 fact of change of country, had lost the power of engendering 

 with the women of their own race, a prolific posterity ; hence, 

 nothing proves that the sterility of their offspring depended 

 on the influence of hybridity, but rather on the influence of 

 climate. 



It is not our purpose successively to review all particular 

 intermixtures produced in human races, or to determine the 

 degree of the fecundity of the hybrids resulting from it. 



To demonstrate that eugenesic hybridity really exists, one 

 instance is sufficient, provided it be conclusive ; and to find 

 this example we need not travel beyond our country. The 

 population of France, as we have amply established elsewhere, 

 is descended from several very distinct races, and presents 

 everywhere the character of mixed races. The pure represent- 

 atives of the primitive races form a very small minority ; never- 

 theless, this hybrid nation, so far from decaying, in accordance 

 with the theory of Mr. Grobineau; far from presenting a 

 decreasing fecundity, according to some other authors, grows 



1 Volney, Voyage en Syric ct en Egyptc, t. i, p. OS. Paris, 17o7. 



