THE RACES OF MAN. 167 



Other hand, Dr. Bachman of Charleston" positively asserts that 

 he has known mulatto families which have Intermarried for sev- 

 eral generations, and have continued on an average as fertile as 

 either pure whites or pure blacks. Inquiries formerly made by 

 Sir C. Lyell on this subject led him, as he Informs me, to the 

 same conclusion.'^ In the United States the census for the year 

 1854 included, according to Dr. Bachman, 405,751 mulattoes; and 

 this number, considering all the circumstances of the case, seems 

 small; but it may partly be accounted for by the degraded and 

 anomalous position of the class, and by the profligacy of the 

 women. A certain amount of absorption of mulattoes into ne- 

 groes must always be in progress; and this would lead to an 

 apparent diminution of the former. The inferior vitality of 

 mulattoes is spoken of in a trustworthy work" as a well-known 

 phenomenon; and this, although a different consideration from 

 their lessened fertility, may perhaps be advanced as a proof of the 

 specific distinctness of the parent races. No doubt both animal 

 and vegetable hybrids, when produced from extremely distinct 

 species, a.re liable to premature death; but the parents of mulat- 

 toes cannot be put under the category of extremely distinct spe- 

 cies. The common Mule, so notorious for long life and vigor, 

 and yet so sterile, shows how little necessary connection there is 

 in hybrids between lessened fertility and vitality; other analogous 

 cases could be cited. 



Even if it should hereafter be proved that all the races of men 

 were perfectly fertile together, he who was inclined from other 

 reasons to rank them as distinct species, might with justice argue 

 that fertility and sterility are not safe criterions of specific dis- 

 tinctness. We know that these qualities are easily affected by 

 changed conditions of life, or by close inter-breeding, and that 

 they are governed by highly complex laws, for instance, that of 

 the unequal fertility of converse crosses between the same two 

 species. With forms which must be ranked as undoubted species, 

 a perfect series exists from those which are absolutely sterile 

 when crossed, to those which are almost or completely fertile. 



" 'An Examination of Prof. Agassiz's Sketch of the Nat. Provinces 

 of the Animal World,' Charleston, 1855, p. 44. 



12 Dr. Rohlfs writes to me that, he found the mixed races in the Great 

 Sahara, derived from Arabs, Berbers, and Neg-roes of three tribes, 

 extraordinarily fertile. On the other hand, Mr. Winwood Reade in- 

 forms me that the Negroes on the Gold Coast, though admiring white 

 men and mulattoes, have a maxim that mulattoes should not inter- 

 marry, as the children are few and sickly. This belief, as Mr. Reade 

 remarks, deserves attention, as white men have visited and resided 

 on the Gold Coast for four hundred years, so that the natives have had 

 ample time to gain knowledge through experience. 



1= 'Military and Anthropolog. Statistics of American Soldiers,' by 

 B. A. Gould, 1869, p. 319. 



