<C;iap. VII. 
TIIE EACES OF MAN. 
241 
cross, the first result is a heterogeneous mixture : 
thus Mr. Hunter, in describing the Santali or hill- 
tribes of India, says that hundreds of imperceptible 
gradations may be traced “ from the black, squat tribes 
“ of the mountains to the tall olive-coloured Brahman, 
“ with his intellectual brow, calm eyes, and high but 
‘^narrow head;” so that it is necessary in courts of 
justice to ask the witnesses whether they are Santalis 
or Hindoos . 37 Whether a heterogeneous people, such 
as the inhabitants of some of the Polynesian islands, 
formed by the crossing of two distinct races, with few 
or no pure members left, would ever become homo- 
geneous, is not known from direct evidence. But as 
with our domesticated animals, a crossed breed can 
certainly, in the course of a few generations, be fixed 
and made uniform by careful selection , 38 we may infer 
that the free and prolonged intercrossing during many 
generations of a heterogeneous mixture would supply 
the place of selection, and overcome any tendency to 
^reversion, so that a crossed race would ultimately be- 
come homogeneous, though it might not partake in an 
equal degree of the characters of the two parent-races. 
Of all the differences between the races of man, the 
colour of the skin is the most conspicuous and one of 
the best marked. Differences of this kind, it was for- 
merly thought, could be accounted for by long expo- 
sure under different climates ; but Pallas first shewed 
that this view is not tenable, and he has been followed 
by almost all anthropologists . 39 The view has been 
37 ‘ The Annals of Rural Bengal/ 1868, p. 134. 
38 4 The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication/ vol. 
ii. p. 95. 
3fl Pallas, ‘Act. Acad. St. Petersburgh/ 1780, part ii. p. 69. He 
was followed by Rudolphi, in his ‘ Beytrage zur Anthropologie/ 1812. 
An excellent summary of the evidence is given by Godron, ‘ De 
1’Espece/ 1859, vol. ii. p. 246, &c. 
VOL. I. 
R 
