Page:Last of the tasmanians.djvu/356

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RETURN TO PARENTAL TYPE.
315

found the child of a white man and Indian female more of its mothers type; that of an Indian and Negress had stiff hair and oblique eyes; and that of a white man and Mestiza having a light copper colour, with oblique eyes and stiff hair. A dark-skinned woman has been often noticed with lighter coloured children by her own race after bearing offspring with a white man. The Griquas of South Africa by continued crossing have become almost pure Africans. It is singular that while the union of a white man and a Negress is fecund, that of a black man with a white woman should be often sterile. Professor Waitz ascertained that while Mulattoes were not very fertile among their own people, they were sufficiently so with the original races, and more so with the darker than lighter partners.

A remarkable case of tendency to return to the parent stock is narrated by Sir W. Denison, formerly Governor of Tasmania and of New South Wales. Norfolk Island was then one of his dependencies, and the Pitcairn islanders had been lately removed to that lovely and fertile home. "But," says the Governor, "they are gradually getting darker, and reverting to the Tahitian type; not on account of the climate, for they are in lat. 33° S., but, probably, I should say possibly, owing to some quality of skin handed down by their Tahitian mothers."

It may, perhaps, be admitted that to some extent, at least, mixed races are of transitory duration, and of varied character. The distinguished Parisian anthropologist, Dr. Paul Broca, contends for the principle of changing and unequal degrees of eugenesic hybridity. He describes the differences thus:—the hybridity of fertility; the agenesic, or unfertile; the dysgenesic, or nearly sterile; the paragenesic, or of partial fecundity. Dr. Peter Browne, of Philadelphia, in his learned treatise on Hair, perceived no tendency in half-breeds to produce a new and separate form of hair, but only to perpetuate one kind of pile, or more commonly to possess the character of the hair of both parents on the head at the same time. But he was led by his examination to assert—"When the progeny hold an intermediate place, and they breed together only, they gradually become less and less capable of reproduction, and after a few generations the race runs out."

Although one of the American Indian protectors has lately