95 



CHAPTER VIL 



THE INFLUENCE OF HYBEIDITY. 



WE must regard hybridity in a double point of view, as being 

 able or unable to give an indication of the real value of different 

 human races, as compared with the acknowledged natural 

 groups in the greater number of zoological classifications ; and 

 on the other hand, we must study hybridity, belonging, as 

 has been asserted, to the creation of new races. 



It has been said, we repeat, that all men being able to re- 

 produce one with another, the genus homo only constitutes one 

 single family. That this argument should hold good, it was 

 necessary to be proved that among animals (for thence it was 

 that it was borrowed) two well acknowledged species, more 

 different even than two human races, should never be prolific 

 one with the other. Now, this is far from being the case. 

 Isidore Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, who has treated this subject in 

 a masterly manner in his Histoire Naturelle Generale, acknow- 

 ledges that animals belonging to two different genera can, by 

 a union, produce a mixed breed, which, consequently he calls 

 bigenerate hybrids. 



So we will not give ourselves the trouble of contesting, as 

 some polygenists have done, the universality of reproduction 

 between all races of mankind ; we will not ask if every degree 

 of combination has been observed, the union, for instance, of 

 an Esquimaux with a Negro, an American with an Australian, 

 a Tartar with a Bosjesman. Let us admit, what is, perhaps, 

 hardly the truth, that all races produce one with another, we 

 will admit all this ; and yet it will prove nothing in favour of 

 the monogenists who have brought forward this fact, since we 



