102 THE INFLUENCE OF HYBRIDITY. 



the same race, have become real Georgians and Circassians 

 themselves. It has not been so, however, because the harems 

 are recruited in Europe as well as in Asia, and even then the 

 fact would only be applicable to families of high position. The 

 truth seems to be that the real Turkish blood has nearly disap- 

 peared, and has been encroached upon and replaced by the old 

 blood of the country, either Macedonian or Thracian. 



We are ignorant of the laws which govern the disappearance 

 of one race in the sight of another. Sometimes it happens 

 very rapidly ; sometimes it does not show itself. The complex 

 conditions which rule it enter into the great order of facts 

 which Darwin has so ingeniously classed under the name of 

 the struggle for existence. They have always seemed to us to 

 present a complete analogy with the disappearance of certain 

 animal species before others, the steps of which disappearance 

 history sometimes allows us to measure ; so that there seems 

 to be a curious similarity between the great fluctuations of 

 nations and of animals upon continents. We are almost 

 tempted to say that the invasion of the West by the Barba- 

 rians, the black rat, and the field mouse, is the triple expres- 

 sion of one and the same biological law. The American popu- 

 lation retrogrades, like certain animals ;* that of the Australian 

 coasts has disappeared ; and we believe that the Negroes of 

 Africa themselves will be called, at some distant period, to 

 give up their place in their turn. 



We do not know any more about the conditions which allow 

 two types to subsist indefinitely one near the other : must we 

 attribute this resistance to the country, or the races which are 

 always before them ? Why, if the Normans have disappeared 

 in America, Italy, and Asia, should they still remain in Nor- 

 mandy, few in number, it is true, but always the same, and 

 perfectly described by Linnaeus, when he said of the Goths in 

 the Scandinavian peninsula, " They have smooth, fair hair, 

 and the iris of the eye is of a bluish colour."t Even when 



* It is the case with the hippopotamus and the lion. 



f Thus, at least, Buffon translates " Gothi corpore proceriore, capiUis al- 

 bidis rectis, oculorum indibus cinere cserulescentibus." Linnieus, Fauna 

 suecica, p. 1. 



