CHAPTER VIII 



HYBRIDISM AND INTEECEOSSING 



Opinions as to the social value of intercrossing were mucli 

 divided during the first part of the latter half of the nineteenth 

 century. On the one hand, Quatrefages believed, not only in 

 the harmlessness, but in the positive benefits, of social hybridism. 

 In defence of his thesis, he cited instances culled from the most 

 varied countries — the South Sea Islands, Mexico, Brazil, Para- 

 guay, Argentina, Chile ; and he declared that, notably in South 

 America, " a population approaching ever nearer to the white 

 type win end by absorbing all the other elements." Quatrefages 

 also cited the case of the Pitcairn Island mutineers, afterwards 

 removed to Norfolk Island. When Captain Beechey visited 

 Pitcairn in 1825, he found there a population of seventy indi- 

 viduals remarkable for their strength, agility, and alert intelli- 

 gence, not less than for their moral quahties and for their desire 

 to instruct themselves. And yet this population was entirely 

 hybrid, derived as it was from EngHsh sailors, Taitians, and Poly- 

 nesian women.^ 



On the other hand, Gobineau saw in such crossing the source of 

 racial degeneracy. " It would be erroneous," he wrote, " to 

 pretend that aU intercrossing is necessarily harmful. . . . The 

 offspring may be reared. Unfortimately, however, the older 

 generation has at the same time been degraded, and this is an 

 evil which nothing can compensate or make good. . . . There- 



1 Quatrefages, cited by Ribot, L'Heredite psychologique, p. 345. 

 Paris, Alcan, 1902. 



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