8 LIVERPOOL BIOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 
inhabited by negroes, given as an illustration of the 
supposed swamping effect by free intercrossing of a marked 
variety with the parent species. I then went on to say* 
in criticism of the result at which Jenkin arrived, viz. that 
the characteristics of the white man would be stamped 
out by intercrossing with the black:-— 
“‘Two influences have, I think, been ignored, viz. atavism, or reversion to 
ancestral characters, and the tendency of the members of a variety to breed 
with one another. Keeping to the case described above, I should imagine that 
the numbers of intelligent young mulattoes produced in the second, third, 
fourth and few succeeding generations would to a large extent intermarry, the 
result of which would be that a more or less white aristocracy would be formed 
on the island, including the king and all the chief people, the most intelligent 
men and the bravest warriors. Then atavism might produce every now and 
then a much whiter individual—a reversal to the characteristics of the 
ancestral EKuropean—who, by being highly thought of in the whitish 
aristocracy, would have considerable influence on the colour and other 
characteristics of the next generation. Now such a white aristocracy would be 
in precisely the same circumstances as a favourable variety competing with its . 
parent species,” &c. 
You may imagine then my pleasure when a few months 
after writing the above I accidentally found in a lettert 
written by the celebrated African traveller Dr. David 
Livingstone to Lord Granville, and dated ‘‘ Unyanyembe, 
July 1st, 1872,” the following passage :— 
‘* About five generations ago, a white man came to the highlands of Basaiigo, 
which are in a line east of the watershed. He bad six attendants, who all died, 
and eventually their headman, called Charura, was elected chief by the 
Basafigo. In the third generation he had sixty able-bodied spearmen as lineal 
descendants. This implies an equal number of the other sex. They are very 
light in colour, and easily known, as no one is allowed to wear coral beads 
such as Charura brought except the royal family. A book he brought was lost 
only lately. The interest of the case lies in its connection with Mr. Darwin’s 
celebrated theory on the ‘origin of species,’ for it shows that an improved 
* Proc. Biol. Soc., Liverpool, vol. iii., p. 6, 1889. 
+ In Appendix to H. M. Stanley’s ‘‘How I Found Livingstone,” 2nd ed. 
London, 1872; see p. 715. 
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