ction of Europe, Palaeontology tells us nothing of
man or of his works.

To sum up our knowledge of the ethnological past of man: so far as the
light is bright, it shows him substantially as he is now; and, when it
grows dim, it permits us to see no sign that he was other than he is
now.

It is a general belief that men of different stocks differ as much
physiologically as they do morphologically; but it is very hard
to prove, in any particular case, how much of a supposed national
characteristic is due to inherent physiological peculiarities, and
how much to the influence of circumstances. There is much evidence to
show, however, that some stocks enjoy a partial or complete immunity
from diseases which destroy, or decimate, others. Thus there seems
good ground for the belief that Negroes are remarkably exempt from
yellow fever; and that, among Europeans, the melanochrous people are
less obnoxious to its ravages than the xanthochrous. But many writers,
not content with physiological differences of this kind, undertake to
prove the existence of others of far greater moment; and, indeed, to
show that certain stocks of mankind exhibit, more or less distinctly,
the physiological characters of true species. Unions between these
stocks, and still more between the half-breeds arising from their
mixture, are affirmed to be either infertile, or less fertile than
those which take place between males and females of either stock under
the same circumstances. Some go so far as to assert that no mixed
breeds of mankind can maintain themselves without the assistance of
one or other of the parent stocks, and that, consequently, they must
inevitably be obliterated in the long run.

Here, again, it is exceedingly difficult to obtain trustworthy
evidence, and to free the effects of the pure physiological experiment
from adventitious influences. The only trial which, by a strange
chance, was kept clear of all such influences--the only instance in
which two distinct stocks of mankind were crossed, and their progeny
intermarried without any admixture from without--is the famous case
of the Pitcairn Islanders, who were the progeny of Bligh's English
sailors by Tahitian women. The results of this experiment, as
everybody knows, are dead against those who maintain the doctrine of
human hybridity, seeing that the Pitcairn Islanders, even though they
necessarily contracted consanguineous marriages, throve and multiplied
exceedingly.

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