classed as distinct species.
Our supposed naturalist having proceeded thus far in his investigation,
would next enquire whether the races of men, when crossed, were in any
degree sterile. He might consult the work (9. On the Phenomena of
Hybridity in the Genus Homo, Eng. translat., 1864.) of Professor
Broca, a cautious and philosophical observer, and in this he would find
good evidence that some races were quite fertile together, but evidence
of an opposite nature in regard to other races. Thus it has been
asserted that the native women of Australia and Tasmania rarely produce
children to European men; the evidence, however, on this head has now
been shewn to be almost valueless. The half-castes are killed by the
pure blacks: and an account has lately been published of eleven
half-caste youths murdered and burnt at the same time, whose remains
were found by the police. (10. See the interesting letter by Mr. T.A.
Murray, in the Anthropological Review, April 1868, p. liii. In this
letter Count Strzelecki s statement that Australian women who have
borne children to a white man, are afterwards sterile with their own
race, is disproved. M. A. de Quatrefages has also collected (Revue des
Cours Scientifiques, March, 1869, p. 239), much evidence that
Australians and Europeans are not sterile when crossed.) Again, it has
often been said that when mulattoes intermarry, they produce few
children; on the other hand, Dr. Bachman, of Charleston (11. An
Examination of Prof. Agassiz s Sketch of the Nat. Provinces of the
Animal World, Charleston, 1855, p. 44.), positively asserts that he
has known mulatto families which have intermarried for several
generations, and have continued on an average as fertile as either pure
whites or pure blacks. Enquiries formerly made by Sir C. Lyell on this
subject led him, as he informs me, to the same conclusion. (12. Dr.
Rohlfs writes to me that he found the mixed races in the Great Sahara,
derived from Arabs, Berbers, and Negroes of three tribes,
extraordinarily fertile. On the other hand, Mr. Winwood Reade informs
me that the Negroes on the Gold Coast, though admiring white men and
mulattoes, have a maxim that mulattoes should not intermarry, as the
children are few and sickly. This belief, as Mr. Reade remarks,
deserves attention, as white men have visited and resided on the Gold
Coast for four hundred years, so that the natives have had ample time
to gain knowledge through experience.) In the United States the census
for the year 1854 included, according to Dr. Bachman, 405,751
mulattoes; and this number, considering all the circumstances of the
189