INTRODUCTION. 91 



blacks, but never blacks among whites. 3d, from the dark races 

 being better fitted fur savage life than the whites. 4th, from the 

 lowest actual races being akin to Negroes. In his " Physical His- 

 tory of Man," he says, " The Melanic variety may be looked upon 

 as the natural and original complexion of the human species." 



It is a general law of nature that deviations from the natural type, 

 accidental or the product of disease, have a constant tendency to 

 return to the original type. For Prichard's reasons, above given, 

 the white races are not the progenitors of the black races ; and if 

 the first races were black, we ought occasionally to find children of 

 white parents born black, by reason of the natural tendency to return 

 to the original type. The difficulty is the same in both theories. 

 Again, all unnatural, accidental, or monstrous births, are either abso- 

 lutely incapable of procreation, or they quickly die out, unless 

 renewed by intermixture of the original stocks. This will be more 

 fully treated when speaking of hybridity. It is equally vain to 

 pretend that varieties were thus produced in early ages, before a 

 crowded population existed to swallow them up, as would now be the 

 case. No race of " hairy men" arose from Esau. To suppose 

 that the sons of Noah had children, of exactly the colors required 

 by this theory, who married women of a color exactly corresponding, 

 is too great a demand on our credulity. To say, with Van Amringe, 

 chat the sons of Noah were changed by a miraculous interposition, 

 so as to produce the varieties of man, is not allowable ; for no one 

 has a right to suppose a miracle. 



Professor Agassiz instituted a series of experiments in 1850, 

 which have a bearing on this point. He took a great number of 

 rabbits, of every variety of color, and bred them together with great 

 care ; the offspring were never intermediate in color between the 

 parents, but were either exactly like one parent or the other, or 

 showed a tendency to the gray color of the original wild stock. But 

 take different species, as the horse and the ass, and the offspring 

 resembles neither parent, but is a mule, intermediate between the 

 two. So, put black and white together, the child is neither black 

 nor tchiie, but a mulatto. The rare instances where children from 

 such a union have been either perfectly black, or perfectly white, must 

 be regarded as exceptions. So far as analogy can be trusted, the 

 result of these observations shows that the human races are distinct 

 species. 



In hybrids, animal and human, there is a tendency to return 

 to the original stocks. There is reason to believe that hybrid- 

 ity is, in man at least, a state of degeneration, and that the 

 mongrel race must either keep itself up by continual mixture with 



