L acordiSr e ’s in his Untomologie], in natural history, is very simple
and obvious. It includes only one circumstance, namely, an original
distinctiveness and constant transmission of any character. A race
of animals, or plants, marked by any peculiarity of structure, which
have always been constant and undeviating, constitutes a species;
and two races are considered as specifically different, if they are
distinguished from each other by some peculiarities, which one
cannot be supposed to have acquired, or the other to have lost,
through any known operation of physical causes : for we are led to
conclude, that the tribe thus distinguished cannot have sprung from
the sam,e original stock.” It need hardly be repeated that the
learned ethnographer endeavors to show the inapplicability, owing
to deviations, of this law to Man. My studies lead me to the opposite
opinion, exemplified in the instances above enumerated.
Such simple principles are notorious to dog-fanciers, Cattle-
breeders, or poultry-men; and are practised by them with unerring
pecuniary success, in the rearing of animals, quadruped or biped.
It is but a superstition that imagines mankind not to be bound by
the same natural law.
Under this self-evident rule, ■ some scholastic confusion of ideas
may be disposed of through a few interrogatories. If, by “ species”
are meant beings of the same (equally-conventional word) genus,
whose sexual union produces offspring, mankind fall into that class
unquestionably; with dogs, sheep, goats, and Other mammals susceptible
of domestication ;109 but what living naturalist, of repute, at
this year 1857, any longer classifies all the canes, all the oves, or all
the caprae, each into a single “ species?” If hybridity, in any of
its various and as yet unsettled degrees, be considered a test of
“ species” — i. e. the production of progeny more or less unprolific
inter se — then, in Australia,110 a native female of the aboriginal
stock ceases, after cohabitation with an English colonist, to procreate
upon reunion with a male autochthon of her own race1:
—then, in Van Diemen’s Land, before the deportation of its few
(only 210) remaining aborigines, in 1835, to Flinder’s Island, Bass’s
Straits,111 even a convict population of athletic and unscrupulous
English males failed, in their intercourse with Tasmanian females,
109 M o r t o n , Hybridity in Animals and Plants, New Haven, 1847 ; p. 23jp?- The égagre is,
however, reputed to be the father of all goats ; the mouflon, that of all sheep ; the Nepaulese
buansu [cams primoevus) that of all dogs ; just as Adam that of all mankind ; according to
Marcel de Serres (Cosmogonie de Moïse, I, pp. 307-22).
110 S t r z e l e c k i , Physical description of New South Wales and Van Diemen’s Land, London,
8vo, 1845; pp. 346-7: — J a c q u in o t , Zoologie, II, p. 109:—K n o x , Races, p. 190.
• 111 Q u o y et G a im a r d , Voy. de VAstrolabe, 1826-9; Zoologie, Paris, 8vo, 1830; I, p*
46 :— D ’O m a l iu s d ’H a l l o y , Des Races Humaines, 1845 ; p. 186.
not merely to: produce an intermediate race, but to leave more than
one or two adult specimens of their repugnant unions ; nor are there
reports either of hybrids, resulting from the mixture of Europeans
with the Andamanes of the bay of Bengal :-then, in the ultra-tropical
parts of America, as well as: in its southern or tropical States,
mulattoes, produced by intercourse between exotic Europeans of
the white race, with equally-exotic African females of the black die
out, unless recrossed by one or other of the parental stocks in three
or four generations:1“ - th e n , in Egypt, the Memlooks, or “ Ghuz ”
originally male slaves113 of the Uzbek, Ouïgour and Mongol races
and afterwards kept up by incessant importations of European'
Turkish, Circassian, and other white boys (intermixed with negro
slaves), were not only unable to rear half-caste children to recruit
their squadrons; — but, whilst their blood-stains are scarcely yet
obliterated on the battlements of the Cairine-Citadel since their
slaughter in 1811, not a trace survives of their promiscuous philo-
gamy among the Eellàh population of the Nile : — then, in Algeria
the Moorish (Mauri), or Mauresque114 inhabitants of seaboard cities’
[m a climate which, except in depressed agricultural localities (where
the Moors do not reside), is like that of southern Spain] unstrength-
ened (as of yore in the piratical days when Christian captives of all
shades and negro prisoners of every hue, thronged their slave-
bazaars) by the perpetual influx of new and Vigorous blood, — are
dying off at a fearful rate115 through the inexorable laws of hybridity •
at the same time that, after twenty-five years of experimental agri-
Natural Bist- ° f the Caucasian and Negro Races, Mobile, 1844; pp 16-7 19
¿8, 3 0-5:—Biblical and Physical Hist, of Man; New York, 1849; pp 30-47
n MeaUX t VAm' PariS’ 1826> PP' 121~2- Ebn Khapedoon, Histoire de,
Rerbères et des Dynasties Musulmanes de l'Afrique Septentrionale, Transi, de Slane, Alger
1861, II, p. 49 —and Note from Qüatremère (Mém. sur VEgypte, II, p. 356).
Carette, Exploration Scientifique de VAlgérie, 1840-2, Paris, 1853; III pp 306-10
Z Z n Z Z Z r °f Rr S’ PASCAL_DUPEAT’ Essai historique sur les Races ancienne, 'et
rnocUrnes de l Afrique Septentrionale, Paris, 1845; pp. 217, 2 4 0 -6 4 :-b u t the best definition
of the varied inhabitants of that part of Barbaiy may be seen in Rozet (Voyage dans la
Ü T . ^anS’ Wh°’ am°ng 016 “ Sept Tariétés d’hommes bien distinctes les
2 es des autres; les Berbères, les Maures, les nègres, les Arabes, les Turcs et les Eoulouglis,”
early stakes ont the mixed populace of Maures (Moors); and proves, as well their hy-
nusooll<!ePti0Ils (Shakspeare’s Othello to wit) prevalent about their name HvaZ } a T i f ’ i l l ° n t b e ° P P 0S ite S id e ’ COnSnlt Hygiene des Arabes, Paris, 1855;. pp. 174, 556. B e r™ a n d , Médecine et
n Z Z Z mZ mS‘0ire SlatM«ue de la ‘“Ionisation et de la Population en Algérie, Paris, 1853 •
derives his f m KS°X ^ -^ 7 - 2 1 0 ) , who acknowledges that h«
tiens , mf0r“ a*1?n from a former Publication of the highest authority in these ques-
Roulê P7 ““f fnend> M‘ le Dr' Boudin> Médecin en Chef de l'Hôpital Militaire du
eom ; f r s ( Z tT : Ur! ’f fférie’ im h 1 awaît ^ ^ ! P f seen
(now ” Proof-sheets at Paris; Dr. Boudin’s Traité de Statistique et de Géographie médicale,
sous presse chez Baillière”), for complet.» establishment of all these positions.