DEGENERAjCY OF HALF-BREEDS 127 



pathological predisposition in one parent is eliminated, as far as 

 the offspring are concerned, by the mingling of slightly different, 

 and healthy, blood. As to the product of two distinct species 

 and of hybrids, opinion is divided. It must, however, be borne 

 in mind that just as results based on the facts of self-fertilisa- 

 tion do not warrant us judging of the probable results of con- 

 sanguinity ; so the results of the crossing of varieties are by no 

 means analogous to those obtained by the crossing of species or 

 hybrids. On the one hand there is the clearest evidence, as 

 Darwin puts it, that a cross between individuals of the same 

 species, which differ to a certain extent, gives vigour and fertility 

 to the offspring ; and on the other hand the balance of evidence 

 decidedly tends to show that a cross between individuals of 

 different species, or even of very distinct varieties of the same 

 species, is by no means beneficial as a general rule. 



Darwin remarks that every traveller has noticed the degenera- 

 tion and also the savage character of hybrid human races. He 

 quotes Livingstone, who observed that no one could understand 

 why the half-breeds in the Zambesi country are much more 

 cruel than the Portuguese, but the fact is incontestable. An 

 inhabitant, indeed, once summed up the case epigrammatically 

 when he said to Livingstone that " God had made the white man, 

 and God had made the black, but the devil had made the half- 

 breed." Darwin goes on to quote Humboldt, who hkewise 

 expresses himself in vigorous terms concerning the savage dis- 

 position of the half-breeds of Indians and negroes ; and Darwin 

 observes that when two races, hoth of which are inferior, cross, 

 the product is in the highest degree unsatisfactory.^ Whether 

 or not this degradation is the result of a return to atavistic 

 forms, such as we witness occasionally in biology, it is certain that 

 racial intercrossing usually brings indubitable racial degeneracy 

 in its train. " The instabiUty of half-breeds, like their dis- 

 similarity, usually increases from generation to generation, until 

 1 Variations of Animals and Plants under Domestication, ii. 48, 49. 



