228 THE DESCENT OF MAN 



asserted that the native women of Australia and Tasmania 

 rarely produce children to European men; the evidence, 

 however, on this head has now been shown to be almost 

 valueless. The half-castes are killed by the pure blacks: 

 and an account has lately been published of eleven half- 

 caste youths murdered and burned at the same time, whose 

 remains were found by the police." Again, it has often 

 been said that when mulattoes intermarry they produce few 

 children; on the other hand, Dr. Bachman, of Charleston," 

 positively asserts that he has known mulatto families which 

 have intermarried for several generations, and have contin- 

 ued on an average as fertile as either pure whites or pure 

 blacks. Inquiries formerly made by Sir 0. 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 theprofligacy 

 of the women. A certain amount of absorption of muIaFtoes 

 into negroes 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 



" See the interesting letter by Mr. T. A. Murray, in the "Anthropolog. 

 Eeview," April, 1868, p. liii. In this letter Count Strzelecki's statement, that 

 Australian women who have borne children to a white man are afterward 

 sterile with their own race, is disproved. M. A. de Qualrefages has also 

 collected ("Revue des Cours Seientifiques," March, 1869, p. 239) much evi- 

 dence that Australians and Europeans are not sterile when crossed. 



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

 Animal World," Charleston, 1855, p. 44.. 



'^ Dr. Eohlfs writes to me that he found the mixed races in the Great 

 Sahara, derived from Arabs, Berbers, and Negroes of three tribes, extraordi- 

 narily fertile. On tie other hand, Mr. Winwood Reade informs me that the 

 negroes on the Gold Coast, though admiring white men and mulattoes, have 

 a maxim that mulattoes should not intermarry, 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. 



'* "Military and Anthropolog. Statistics of American Soldiers," by B. A. 

 Gould, 1869, p. 319. 



