THE INFLUENCE OF HYBEIDITY. 107 



produce of such a union ought to tend to reproduce in its 

 purity the primitive type.* If it is not so with the union of 

 different races of men, the reason is simply that they do not 

 directly descend the one from the other; and from this de- 

 basement of produce there results a new proof in favour of the 

 ideas which we are defending. 



It remains for us to speak of hybridity, as applied to the 

 propagation of a deformity or a monstrosity. We know that 

 when we experimentally unite one of this class to the other, 

 two individuals whose organism has equally deviated from the 

 usual type, ' ' nothing is more difficult than to prevent these 

 mischances from being done away with."f A stronger reason, 

 then, for the same when one of these individuals alone is de- 

 formed, which happens always in a state of nature. The races 

 which we can thus produce are a kind of experiment which 

 exist, but which it would be illogical to deduce can exist 

 naturally. Because we make in a laboratory oxygenated water, 

 or mixtures of hydrogen and chlorine, must we admit that 

 these bodies are to be found united in nature? Quite the 

 contrary ; we deduce from their instability that they do not, 

 and cannot thus exist in a natural state. 



* In applying these principles to family consanguinity, we may say in a 

 general manner, that it will be favourable or not to the oifspring according 

 to the state of the parents. If the parents are perfectly healthy, and ex- 

 empt from all commencing degeneracy, they can only give birth to children 

 at least as healthy as themselves. If one of the two parents is tainted with 

 a commencement of degeneracy, the descendant, in his quality of offspring, 

 will perhaps bear the trace of this degeneracy, but sensibly weakened. If 

 the two parents are separately tainted with a different commencement of 

 degeneracy, one or the other ought to continue it in the child, only in a lesser 

 degree. But if the same degeneracy has already tainted both the parents, 

 the offspring will show it in a greater degree, and will tend towards entire 

 disappearance. 



f Flourens, Histoire des Travaux de Buffon, p. 180. 



