58 INTERMIXTURE OP CERTAIN RACES 



woman, sends her away after the lapse of a few years, when 

 she is often not young enough to produce children, as Austra- 

 lian women rarely conceive after the thirtieth year. 2. The 

 cohabitation with a European modifies the constitution of the 

 savage woman, who smokes, and is frequently intoxicated 

 during that time. 3. Having not lost the habits of savage 

 life, she returns to her tribe, where she now has some difficulty 

 to support fatigues and irregularities, which diminishes her 

 fecundity. 4. Finally, when she becomes a mother, and the 

 fatigues of maternity are added to her other troubles, she tries 

 to escape them by infanticide. It is to the united eifect of 

 these causes that the author attributes the rarity of children 

 born of Australian native women who have returned to their 

 tribes. 



It is very significant when an author, despite of himself, 

 confirms by his theories, facts which he had undertaken to 

 disprove. I will not allude again to the story of infanticide, 

 a hundred times more improbable here, than in cases where 

 the child had been begotten by a European. Though it fol- 

 lows, from Mr. Thomson's article, that Strzelecki's assertion 

 was too general, it results at the same time that the assertion 

 was well founded. But this is not the place to search for the 

 explanation of a phenomenon which, despite the efforts of Mr. 

 Harvey, does not touch hybridity. If I have dwelt on the 

 fact, it is because the polemics raised by Strzelecki's observa- 

 tions have incontestably established that the cohabitation of 

 Whites and native Australian women is very common in 

 Australia; and we do not comprehend under this name the 

 sexual intercourse which is accidental and transitory, such as 

 occurs when the women come to market, but the cohabitation 

 under the same roof, and prolonged during several months, 

 and even years. The scarcity of Australian Mulattoos can 

 thus be attributed neither to the rarity nor to the transitory 

 nature of sexual intercourse ; neither can we admit, until we 

 are better informed, that the relative sterility of such crossings 

 is the consequence of some homcoogencsic defect between the 

 two races. 



In studying the cases preceding those just mentioned, we 



