quoted at random the various preceding examples, to show how the most extreme types of mankind have contributed to form a certain number of races. Need I insist upon the mixtures which have been accomplished between the secondary types derived from the first? In Europe what population can pretend to purity of blood? The Basques themselves, who apparently ought to be well protected by their country, institutions, and language, against the invasion of foreign blood, show upon certain points, in the heart of their mountains, the evident traces of the juxtaposition and fusion of very different races. As for the other nations, ranging from Lapland to the Mediterranean, classical history, although it does not go back for a great distance in point of time, is a sufficient proof that crossings are the inevitable result of invasions, wars, and political and social events. Asia presents, as we know, the same spectacle; and, in the heart of Africa, the Gagas, playing the part of the horde of Genghis-Khan, have mixed together the African tribes from one ocean to the other."[1]
Turning now from the past to the present, let us briefly inquire whether, where, and to what extent the intercrossing of the human races is going on in our own generation. And let us begin with our own hemisphere.
In a recent article in this magazine,[2] Professor Rudolph Virchow directed attention to what he terms "a delicate ethnological problem"—"the peculiar physiology of the Yankee." "That type," he says," is not wholly comparable either with the English or the German, or with a cross of the two with the Irish race. "He implies, rather than asserts, that its distinctive features are due to the transforming influence of climate, nor does he hint that it might be the result of a tinge of aboriginal blood. In another portion of the same paper he expresses the belief that, however mixed, the population of the United States must remain Aryan at bottom, heterogeneous elements being absorbed without leaving a trace. The problem is certainly interesting, even if we have regard merely to the stage of development that has been reached, and study American characteristics as compared with those of any of the European races that have had a share in the making of the nation. But its interest is intensified when we survey the scattered groups—white and black and red and yellow—whose amalgamation into one vast community may be the work of years to come.
The opinion prevails that north of the Gulf of Mexico the fusion of European and Indian blood has hitherto been extremely rare. Dr. Daniel Wilson believes, on the other hand, that, to a great extent, what has been taken for the extinction of the Indians has been simply their absorption, and that "they are disappearing as a race, in part at least, by the same process by which the German, the Swede,
- ↑ "The Human Species" ("International Scientific Series"), pp.273, 274.
- ↑ "Acclimatization," in "The Popular Science Monthly," February, 1886.
