352 
Skm-Colonr in Human Crossbreds 
Figs, (ix) and (x) give a dark chocolate coloured girl whose mother was the 
offspring of a mulatto and a slightly higher white strain (? quadroon) and father a 
negro. We see at once a softening of the Sambo tint. 
It will be clear that the crosses (LD) x (LL) and (LD) x (LD) are more likely 
to give us definite answers to our problem than (LD) x (DB) owing to the con- 
siderable colour range in the Sambo. The next investigation therefore turns on 
(LB) X (LB) which should give us the segregation in its simplest form. I therefore 
asked the fourth question, but with some diffidence it must be confessed. • 
(4) Mulatto X mulatto. Does or does not this cross usually give a mulatto in 
colour? The theorists say that 25 p.c. should be pure white skins, 25 p.c. pure 
black skins and only 50 p.c. mulattos. 
Amwer. "This statement of those whom you call the theorists is the most ridiculously 
incorrect of the lot ; indeed it would be very comic to make this statement in public before 
pei'sous who knew. There are now and then slight variations from the usual mulatto brown 
or mulatto yellow, but you may be quite certain that no pure black skins nor pure white 
skins come from mulatto x mulatto. You can state this dogmatically." 
I may add a few remarks more. Did Mendelism apply to the skin colour of 
the crosses between dark and light races, we should expect to find only three tints, 
the light, the dark and the hybrid, whatever the latter may be. The most distant 
" touch of the tar brush" would be visible, if visible at all, in the presence of the 
light mahogany of the mulatto. Yet the colour is just visible in the case of the 
offspring of a quadroon and a pure white I am familiar with, but is hardly dis- 
coverable in the case where one parent is a pure white and the other a cross 
between octoroon and quadroon. I think it probable that characters other than 
skin colour would offer better material for a possible " mendelising." The negroid 
lip, the crimped hair, the characteristic alae nasi, and the peculiar temper are 
qualities which can sometimes be traced after the disappearance of all colour. It 
is conceivable that they would fit the Mendelian theory closer than skin colour, 
and they serve better than colour to predict a distant negroid strain *. 
Finally, I may say that I do not propose to ask my readers to take the views of 
my correspondent as conclusive, but they do, I think, deserve great weight. He 
has mixed all his life with all sorts and conditions of colours, and come into 
* Another correspondent with 32 years' experience in a West Indian Island confirms the opinions of 
my first correspondent, i.e. that blended colour is correct in the cases of mulatto, Sambo and quadroon. 
If a blackish child occurred in a family which should be mulatto, he would hold that the child was 
fathered by a black man. In fact he attributes to illicit connexion of mixed races any exceptions to 
the ordinary rule, and cites as evidence of West India experience the story of the man who said he 
was so dark in colour because a negro ran after his white mother when she was first married ; the reply 
of the sceptic being: "I guess that nigger caught your mother." The same authority notes that if 
mulattos intermarry for some time the skin tends to get lighter in colour, but a full blooded negro also 
gradually inclines to become light in hue ("Pears' soap colour") if in a good position and subject to 
civilising influences. Lastly I may remark that he has noticed that the "bouquet d'Afrique " occurs 
sometimes in a pronounced form in one or two members of cross-blood families, even in Octoroons. Is 
this a true segregation ? 
