24 
that he had then married, and had had six children, “ all with 
the same rugged covering as himself/;* What is more extra- 
ordinary — even his two grandsons, John and Richaid Lambeit, 
were similarly affected ; so that, without attempting to trace 
the transmission of this abnormal variety beyond the thud 
generation, we have proof, as in the former instance, of the 
wonderful powers of nature m handing down to posterity, 
through the principle of family inheritance, some ot the 
greatest monstrosities. . 
45. Assuming, therefore, that the Negro variety sprang up 
in this way through some abnormal prototype, we have, in the 
various cases just mentioned, a rational and just foundation 
for the theory. Nor can the idea be called either novel or un- 
scientific. Lawrence, for example— just as Huxley in relation 
to polydactylism— suggests the possibility of our applying 
this inheritance of abnormal varieties to the formation of new 
types of mankind. 
“Let us suppose,” says he, “that the Porcupine family had been exiled 
from human society, and been obliged to take up their abode m some 
solitary spot or desert island. By matching with each other, a race would 
have been produced more widely different from us in external appearance 
than the Negro. If they had been discovered at some remote period, our 
philosophers would have explained to us how the soil, ah, or climate had 
produced so strange an organization ; or else would have demonstrated that 
they must have sprang from an originally different race ; for who would 
acknowledge such bristly beings for brothers ? ” 
46. We are, therefore, now brought up face to face with 
what appears to me to be the most satisfactory solution ot the 
problem placed before ns. One can see in a moment, as 1 
showed in the last division of this paper, how a new variety ot 
mankind might be thus artificially produced by means ot the 
continued and methodical selection of abnormal pairs, care 
being taken to get no dilution of blood ttrougb recurrence to 
the original stock. But the difficulty is to apply such a state 
of things to the nature of the case ; for, as I have before 1 e- 
marked, common sense teaches us that this is the very P 10 " 
cess which would naturally be most avoided under all such 
instances of malformation. Consequently, if the Negro cha- 
racteristics are to be considered as an abnormal deviation 
from the more ordinary types of mankind, originated through 
some strange and unexpected birth, we must account for their 
transmission and perpetuation, not on the principle of metho- 
# Phil. Trans., vol. xlix. p. 21. 
