difficult to believe that it could have been otherwise, and Gliddon had a right to say, that if the offspring of the two races had been prolific, there would inevitably have been produced in Egypt a mixed race. But the fact revealed by Volney, which is perfectly authentic, still maintains its force, namely, that the Mamelukes, by the simple fact of change of country, had lost the power of engendering with the women of their own race, a prolific posterity; hence, nothing proves that the sterility of their offspring depended on the influence of hybridity, but rather on the influence of climate.

It is not our purpose successively to review all particular intermixtures produced in human races, or to determine the degree of the fecundity of the hybrids resulting from it.

To demonstrate that eugenesic hybridity really exists, one instance is sufficient, provided it be conclusive; and to find this example we need not travel beyond our country. The population of France, as we have amply established elsewhere, is descended from several very distinct races, and presents everywhere the character of mixed races. The pure representatives of the primitive races form a very small minority; nevertheless, this hybrid nation, so far from decaying, in accordance with the theory of Mr. Gobineau; far from presenting a decreasing fecundity, according to some other authors, grows every day in intelligence, prosperity, and numbers. Ever since the revolution has broken the last obstacle which opposed themselves to the mixture of races, and despite of the gigantic wars which during twenty-five years mowed down the élite of its male population, France has seen the number of its inhabitants increase by more than one-third; this is not a symptom of decay. Dr. Knox, in his curious essay on the Races of Men (London, 1850), has thought proper to utter, in relation to the French, some hard truths: and also some calumnies, which we shall put to the account of his patriotism. Mr. Knox has accorded to the French nation an increasing physical prosperity, and as this side of the question is the only one which occupies us here, we might dispense with any other testimony. That learned author thought what he said about the French applied exclusively to the Celtic race; he supposed that upon our soil there were nought but pure Celts, and that the other ethnological elements have not in any degree modified the character of the old Gallic race. I have refuted this assertion at some length in my Mémoire sur l’Ethnologie de la France, and Dr. Knox,23 in praising in his own manner the Celtic race, has not perceived that unconsciously, and contrary to his own system, he wrote the apology of a strongly mixed race. But the partisans of this system will doubtless say that, on the whole, the mixed Kimro-Celtic race, which now inhabits France, does not subsist by itself; that the two parent races, the Celts and the Kimris, one of which predominates in the north-east, the other in the north-west, the south and the centre, persist, almost pure, in their respective regions, and that the mixed race only maintains itself by recruiting themselves incessantly in these vivacious foci. My reply to this is, that the individuals perfectly representing the Celtic or Kimri type are infinitely rarer than the rest, even in the departments where history or observation demonstrates that the influence of one of these races is altogether preponderant. They are especially rare in the districts of the intermediary zone, which I have termed Kimro-Celtic, and where the two chief races have originally become intermixed in nearly equal proportions. Finally, in these latter departments, where the intermixture has been strongest, the population is neither less handsome, nor less robust or prolific than in the others. As regards the vigour of the constitution, I have consulted in the registers for recruiting the special list of exemptions on account of infirmities, that is, for other physical causes than stature. I have found that, other circumstances being equal, there are as many infirm in 1000 conscripts in the purest departments, as in the mixed districts. I cannot here dwell any longer upon this proposition, of which I have given a rigorous demonstration in my Mémoire sur l’Ethnologie de la France.

There remains now the question of fecundity. The causes which determine the increase or the decay of a population are so multifarious, and for the most part so foreign to ethnological influences, that we cannot without committing grave errors, estimate the degree of fecundity of different races, in comparing for each of them, the number of births and deaths. It appears, nevertheless, very probable that all the races are not equally prolific, and the mind easily perceives that there must be between them notable differences. It is, therefore, unnecessary that in order a mixture should be eugenesic the fecundity of the cross-breed should be absolutely equal to that of individuals of pure blood. Had it been demonstrated by strict numbers, that a mixed race, by the simple fact of intermixture breeds less rapidly than the two parent races, and were it demonstrated that it presents a greater number of cases of sporadic sterility, it would by no means result from it that this mixed race is incapable of maintaining itself and increasing by itself. The intermixture would cease to be eugenesic if the fact of sterility became sufficiently general to render the births diminishing with every new generation, so that at length the gaps caused by death could no longer be filled and the race would prove inevitably destined, sooner or later, to become extinct. Thus, even if it were demonstrated that the offspring of an intermixture between Celts and Kimris are somewhat less prolific than the ancestors of the pure races, and that the mixed populations increased less rapidly than the others; the Kimro-Celtic hybridity would not on that account cease to be eugenesic, provided the relative sterility did not descend beneath the degree when the sterility becomes absolute, that is to say, when the fecundity becomes insufficient. But the departments in which history and ethnology prove that the intermixture has been pushed to the extreme point, the population far from having diminished, has increased since the revolution, namely, since the establishment of new territorial divisions, as rapidly as in the rest of France, and it appears to me as certain that the intermixture of Kimris and Celts either between themselves, or with the Romans and Germans, constitute examples of eugenesic hybridity.

We must, however, take care not to imitate the paradoxical reasoning of our adversaries, and because some crossings of certain races are eugenesic, to conclude, à priori, that all the other intermixtures are equally so. The study of hybridity in birds and quadrupeds has taught us that we can never know with certainty, before making the experiment, what will be the result of crossing. Neither must we forget that the ethnological facts which have served us as examples apply to the intermixture of races distinct, no doubt, but nearly related in many respects. The mixture of races more distant from each other, is it equally prolific, and are the descendants eugenesic? This is the question we now intend to examine.

SECTION III.

EXAMPLES TENDING TO PROVE THAT THE INTERMIXTURE OF CERTAIN RACES OF MEN ARE NOT EUGENESIC.

In the first part of this essay we have endeavoured to establish that certain human cross-breeds possess