species. For modern science acknowledges that animals which when in a state of freedom avoided one another sexually, can be induced to form an entire mixture of blood and specific characters. We do not say so much of the commonly cited hybrid productions of the dog, the wolf, and the fox, of the goat and the sheep, of the rabbit and the hare, for in some cases the mongrel forms were not successfully established, while in others the fertility of the hybrids was not continued beyond a few generations. But we will cite the experiment for which we are indebted to Mr. Buxton, who has naturalized two species of cockatoos, in his park in Norfolk, which not only breed every year, but have crossed in the open air and produced a hybrid race which, unlike both its parents, is decorated with a scarlet hood, so that creation here seems to be enriched by a new species. Moreover our canine races are certainly the result of a mixture of species. In shape and make the Eskimo dog approximates to the Arctic wolf; the Indian dog to the prairie wolf; the Nubian domestic dog and its mummied examples clearly testify to their descent from the jackal. 16 Again, the peculiar smell of the lastnamed animal was acquired by dogs which Geoffroi St. Hilaire had for some time fed on raw meat. Our present breeds of cattle have moreover been evolved from two distinct European species: Bos primigenius, which was still wild in Cæsar's time, and Bos longifrons or brachyceros of the Swiss lake dwellings. 17 As long as they lived side by side in freedom they preserved their specific characters in full purity, whereas their structure and form are now completely blended by intercrossing. European cattle are capable of generating hybrids even with the zebu (Bos indicus), the 16 Herr Jeitteles, who has been long studying this question, and has diligently collected the skulls of animals, maintains the complete accordance of the dog of the lake dwellings and the Algerian jackal (Canis Sacalius). Alterthümer der Stadt Olmüstz, p. 79. Vienna, 1872. 17 Rütimeyer arrived at the conclusion that the cattle of Chillingham Park are the descendants of the tamed ure-ox (Bos primigenius), also that the Trochoceros and Frontosus forms are likewise derived from the ure-ox, whereas the Bos brachyceros represents a distinct so-called species. Art und Race des europäischen Rindes im Archiv für Anthropologie, vol. i. pp. 240-247. Brunswick, 1866. Fertility of Hybrids. I I Indian buffalo. Again, our domestic swine are mongrels of the wild-boar, or Sus scrofa, and the Sus indica, which no longer exists in a wild condition. We owe this statement to the craniological investigations of Herr von Nathusius, who in other points ranks among the enlightened opponents of the Darwinian school. That the same can be said of Agassiz gives double weight to the fact, that he declared the endeavour to employ fertility of union as a limitation of species to be a complete fallacy. 18 If this be the case, no obstacle remains to the opinion that the several races of man are distinct species, provided they fulfil the condition which Grisebach holds to be essential for the formation of a species, namely, the absence of transitions not arising from crosses. 19 Occasionally a distinct line may really be drawn, as for instance between Hottentots and the Kaffir tribes; the Papuans of New Guinea and the true Polynesians. Facts such as these have encouraged the pluralistic school of anthropologists to assert a multiplicity of human species. To the United States of America, where this school formerly found its most energetic champion, we may trace the doctrine which teaches that the various inhabitants of the earth were created in those regions which they now inhabit, and that they are not descended from single ancestral pairs, but, like seed sown broadcast by the Creator, at once peopled the earth in hordes, being already in partial possession of their present vocabulary; for in its zeal, this school assumed a plurality of species even within a family connected by ties of language as in the Aryan. These strange opinions were primarily based on the assertion that the characters of specific variety have been maintained in historic ages, especially by the Jews and Brahminical Indians.20 These examples are incapable of converting sincere 18 Essay on Classification, p. 250. London, 1849. 19 Die Vegetation der Erde, vol. i. p. 8. "The sytematiser's method of distinguishing between varieties and species consists in this," that in the first case he can point to intermediate forms, but none in the latter. 20 Tyros in ethnology must be warned against mistakes with regard to the "Black Jews" of Cochin, which were formerly erroneously cited as an example that the sun is capable of altering the colour of the skin. The black Jews are natives of India, purchased as slaves by true white Jews, and received into the community after the fulfilment of the Mosaic rites. sceptics, for we know that during thousands of years, Jews as well as Brahminical Indians have intermarried only among themselves, while the experience of breeders of animals proves that racial characters must thus necessarily become established. Even in modern societies, in which the precepts of caste enjoin marriages in the same rank, it is acknowledged that an aristocratic type occasionally appears; in the Hapsburgs and in the Bourbon families peculiarities of physiognomy have become hereditary in a comparatively short period. It is furthermore supposed that this high antiquity and persistency of type is shown in the representations of various races in the monuments on the Nile. Egyptologists are certainly unanimous that the people of the Pharaohs are distinctly recognizable in the Fellaheen of the Nile, and that, although much defaced, the negroes of the Soudan are beyond all doubt so distinctly portrayed beside them on the wall-paintings that there can be no confusion. It is, however, a suspicious circumstance that the old Egyptian artists unnaturally distorted their figures according to fixed prototypes; they draw the face always in profile, the eye always full face, and the hands invariably as two right hands. Hence we are surprised at the temerity of the pluralists who would infer from these portraits of kings and queens an admixture of Semitic or European blood in the Pharaohs. Of the wife of the founder of the 17th dynasty, Amunoph I., ascribed to the year 1671 B.C., it is said that she most strongly and evidently bears the characteristics of Hebrew blood, and this is at once adduced as proof that the Chaldean type has been traced in Egypt, prior to the arrival of Abraham.21 The head of Rameses the Great is spoken of as highly European and Napoleonic in type. In Rosellini's representation the portrait of Rameses does certainly vividly recall the first Emperor of the French, but that this copy was either unsuccessful, or was purposely endowed with Buonapartist features, is shown by a more accurate drawing published by Robert Hartmann.2 Darwin relates that, in a visit to the British Museum, he and two officials of that institution, whom he speaks of as competent 22 21 Morton, Types of Mankind, p. 163, fig. 33. Persistency of Types. 13 judges, were struck by the strongly marked negro character of the statue of Amunoph III.23 Yet this is described by Nott and Gliddon as a "hybrid without admixture of negro blood." Robert Hartmann was unable to satisfy himself that the Egyptian type had undergone alteration by mixture with Asiatic races, but on the contrary he perceived modifications such as might be accounted for by Nubian conquests and invasions.24 If the monuments of Egypt prove on the one hand that, after the lapse of 4000 years, the inhabitants of the Nile valley still resemble their ancestors, they teach us on the other that, even at that time, the so-called types were merged into one another by intermixtures. No one can feel more forcibly the weakness of the opinion which holds to the immutability of racial characters, than one who has endeavoured to describe various nations, for no single characteristic is strictly the exclusive possession of any race of men, but each loses itself by imperceptible gradations. If it were easy to draw the line between the various races, anthropologists would not so far differ from one another, that one feels himself obliged to separate mankind into two, another into a hundred and fifty species, races, or families. 25 The method followed in these divisions is usually founded on error, for it is not the frequent occurrence of definite characters which is established, but among the numerous representatives of a type, that one is selected which differs most strongly from the members of other races of mankind. Thus the German traveller before he crosses the Alps, possesses a definite conception of the Italian countenance and figure. At Naples he expects everywhere to meet men on whose heads he has only to put a Phrygian cap, in order to recognize in them the well-known operatic figures, and he imagines that he has but to place a trunkless head on a silver plate in the hands of any girl to transform her 23 Darwin, Descent of Man, i. 217. 24 Zeitschrift für Ethnologie, p. 147. Berlin, 1869. 25 Quatrefages, Unité, p. 366. According to Darwin (Descent of Man, i. 226), Virey assumed 2, Jacquinot 3, Kant 4, Blumenbach 5, Buffon 6, Hunter 7, Agassiz 8, Pickering 11, Bory St. Vincent 15, Desmoulins 16, Morton 22, Crawford 60, and Burke 63 species or races. Haeckel (Natürliche Schöpfungsgeschichte, 2 Aufl., p. 604) and Friedrich Müller (Anthropol. Thl. iii. der Novara-Reise) are satisfied with 12 species, and we ourselves have been led to accept 7 divisions. into a Judith. 26 The delusion does not last long, and the traveller soon confesses that what he had pictured to himself as the Italian type is only to be found at Rome assembled on the steps of the Trinità di Monte, where models selected from among thousands offer themselves to the artist. The same thing occurs in Germany. If we see a child with delicate skin, rosy colour, flaxen hair, and modest blue eyes, we congratulate ourselves that we have found such a genuinely German type of girl, without considering that we are thus declaring thousands of others to be not genuine, that is, belonging to no race. In our days, belief in the persistency of specific characters hitherto current has been profoundly shaken by Charles Darwin. Even before his time the fanciful idea of the older geologists had been refuted, that each of the sectional periods, which teachers are obliged to assume for the sake of clearness of expression, had closed with a total annihilation of organic nature, and that then, by a creative fiat a new organic world had followed in its place. As long as our planet has harboured organic life, single new forms of living creatures have silently mingled with the old ones, others have silently disappeared, until, after the lapse of certain periods, new species, all differing from the older ones, are found associated. The succession of time in which the different forms replaced one another was not arbitrary, but presents a morphological chain, each link holding the other, each innovation (in obedience to the law of all genesis) is connected with that which previously existed. Perhaps there is not a single expert in Europe who would not acknowledge that the organic world of the present age presupposes with imperative necessity that a tertiary creation preceded it, for in Australia and South America, as well as in other portions of the earth well-secured against an interchange of species, the animal world is most closely allied to the local fauna now extinct. Hence if Darwin's doctrine consisted merely of the proposition that the succession of species is connected with the past by some cause or other, all geologists, botanists, and zoologists would belong to the school of the great Englishman. But, not satisfied 26 Peschel is thinking of Bernard Luini's picture of the daughter of Herodias, not of Judith, at Vienna. |