On the phenomena of hybridity in the genus Homo / by Paul Broca ; edited, with the permission of the author, by C. Carter Blake.

  • Broca, Paul, 1824-1880.
Date:
1864
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On the phenomena of hybridity in the genus Homo / by Paul Broca ; edited, with the permission of the author, by C. Carter Blake. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    f 38 INTEEMIXTUEE OF CEETAIN EACES continuous intermixture with, the parent stocks. The first who wished to inquire more closely has, by his observations, been led to results opposed to general opinion. To these ob- servations, presenting apparently the guarantee of authenticity, positive obseiwation should be opposed; and it is requisite that the latter should be specially collected in countries where the Germanic race has intermarried with the Negro race of Western Africa. The investigations which might be made in the French, Spanish, or Portuguese colonies would have no direct application. The authors, moreover, we have cited, are far from being the only ones who have denied the fecundity of the Mulattoes in the West Indies. Van Amringe and Hamilton Smith assert, that without a reunion with the parent stocks the Mulattoes would soon become extinct. Day says that Mulattoes are rarely prolific between themselves; and Waitz, somewhat shaken by these testimonies, adds in a note, “ The sterihty of Mulattoes, when it is complete, may be compared with that fact recognised by Wirgman in plants, that the hybrids of intermediate types between the two parent stocks are sterile, whilst those resembling one or the other species are prohfic.”^ From these facts and testimonies there seems to result—1. That the Mulattoes of the Germanic and Ethiopian races pos- sess little prolificacy : 2. That they are inferior in this respect to the Mulattoes born by the intercourse of Negro women and men belonging to the more or less dark complexioned Cau- casian races. Mulattoes of the latter kind exist in large numbers in the greater part of the Antilles, South America, Central America, Mexico, Mauritius, Bourbon, and Senegal. All these coun- tries have been colonised by the French, Spaniards, or Portu- guese. The Mulattoes bona there are fecund in their intermix- ture with the parent stock, as the Mulattoes of Germanic origin; they are also prolific between themselves, at least in the first 1 Waitz, loc. cit., p. 205. Van Amringe, Investigation of the Theories of the Natural History of Man. Hamilton Smith, Natural History of the Human Species, 1848. Hay, Five Years Residence in the West Indies, vol. i, p. 294. 1852.