SECT. III.] PERMANENCE OP TYPE. 189 



southern part of Chili, greatly increase, and are described by 

 Poppig as very prolific. 



These facts are sufficient to weaken the argument of a specific 

 difference between the two principal races of mankind, as 

 founded upon the pretended sterility of mixed races. They 

 refute, at the same time, the theory that mixed races can 

 only perpetuate themselves by re-crossing with the parent 

 stocks. That mixed tribes, by a continued re-crossing with 

 individuals of a parent stock, revert to it after a few gene- 

 rations, cannot be adduced as a proof of the immutability of 

 an original type, as the few foreign elements disappear. Poppig, 

 however, 1 says, that it is in the American colonies a well known 

 fact, that mixed tribes, abandoned to themselves, revert again 

 to the original type (to which ?) . If this be so, it can only be 

 considered as an exceptional case, which certainly cannot serve as 

 a general rule, considering the large number of mixed popula- 

 tions which are self-subsistent. When, further, W. F. Edwards 2 

 thinks that he can recognize the types of the original races in 

 the mixed population of France, Switzerland, and Italy, sup- 

 porting M. Serres* assertion of the absolute permanence of 

 original type, we must bear in mind that this is merely a sub- 

 jective theory without any anatomical proofs, and that we are 

 ignorant as to these original types. Nott and Grliddon go 

 much farther ; they are not merely of opinion that all original 

 types are still to be found, but that the type of the skull long 

 outlives the history and civilization of a people, it being inca- 

 pable of alteration, and is constantly reproduced until again it 

 predominates. We should, therefore, not be surprised were 

 they to assert, with regard to the mixed population of Paraguay 

 which is said so much to resemble the English, that it is not a 

 mixed type, but the genuine old Iberian form of the Spaniards 

 which now reappears in South America. Cautious observers, 

 Schomburgh for instance, 3 confine their remarks to the ef- 

 fect that some peoples, in their intermixtures with others, 

 preserve their peculiarities for a longer, others for a shorter 



1 Art. " Indier," in Ersch und Gruber, p. 359. 



2 Mem. de la soc. ethnol.," i et ii. 



3 " Bullet, soc. geogr.," ii, p. 63, 1851. 



