CHAPTER V
Half-breeds, Hybridization, Atavism, Heredity, Men-
tal and Physical Characters of Race Hybrids.
In the present chapter it is my intention to deal quite fully with the question of hybridization, and race hybrids in nature, and discuss to some extent the little we know about them. Most of my remarks will be confined to hybridization as exemplified in the human race in general as bearing particularly upon the special subject with which the present volume is concerned, and that is, the hybridization of the Africans and the whites in the United States of America. Very considerable attention has been paid to it in times past, and it is receiving a large share of attention at the present time, that is the whole matter of breeding in the domestic animals and in fruit, flowers and vegetables used by man. But as I have before remarked, little or no attention is being paid to the successful breeding of mankind. We know a good deal of the laws governing the production of hybrids, of artificial selection and evolution, development and the rest, but we take no effectual steps to utilize them in our own case. In other words, at the present time, race improvement with us is purely a matter of chance, and in some great movements in which it has been profoundly involved, we have been quite blind as to the results, and quite deaf to the teachings of nature.
(84)
