270 PROF. T, MCKENNY HUGHES^ F.R.S., ON 



is to say, vv'hen two different breeds are crossed there is a 

 ji^reater tendency to reproduce the characteristics of tlie one 

 than of the other : that, as a rule, the more ancient and long- 

 established breeds have greater prepotency of transmission 

 than the newer : that under certain conditions there is a 

 reversion of type ; that is to say, characteristics of some 

 ancestral form reappear in the remote offspring : that 

 when two divergent types are crossed there is apt to be a 

 reappearance of an ancestral type differing from either of the 

 parents. All such points should be taken into account in 

 any enquiry into the characters of a people made up of 

 various races — sometimes closely akin, sometimes widely 

 divergent, which have been time after time crowded together 

 and isolated from the rest of the world. 



What we have to deal with to-night are groups of people 

 Avho have been geographically isolated so long that in 

 accordance with their environment they have arrived at 

 some common characters Avhich have become more or less 

 stable. 



We can trace some of these back through long ages and 

 various vicissitudes ; others appear to have been stereotyped, 

 as it were, long before they take their place in history. But 

 let us see whether we can anywhere watch the formation of 

 a race and the circumstances which mould its characters. 



America. 



Any one might think that we could find in America the 

 examples we seek ; and although the conditions are too 

 complex and artificial to give us any very satisfactory 

 results, yet there is much to be learned from the facts 

 observed there. America began with a large population of 

 negroes and a small number of white people encroaching on 

 the territory of mixed races of unknown origin. But the 

 limits of these three distinct groups liave alwaj' s been some- 

 what sharply defined, and there has not been any great 

 amount of interbreeding between them. 



In more recent times an enormous white population has 

 poured into America, and this has not absorbed but has 

 pushed away and nearly exterminated the native tribes, and 

 has not coalesced with the negro. Where large bodies of 

 Celtic-speaking people from the British Isles, or Germans or 

 French have gone out together, or settled in the same district, 

 they have to a certain extent remained distinct, retaining: 



