excessive fecundity. The coloured people are also accused of being
inferior in physical constitution when compared with either of the
parent races, and therefore undesirable.

My own observations, corroborated by the opinions of many other
observers, leads me to believe that the fecundity of the coloured people
is neither greater nor less than that of other people--white, black or
yellow--whose birthrate is not artificially restricted, and that their
general physical constitution, when not undermined by disease or stunted
by underfeeding, is as strong as that of any other human variety. The
great naturalist, Wallace, has insisted that some degree of difference
favours fertility, but that a little more tends to infertility, and by
applying this hypothesis to the facts as I have observed them I am led
to believe that there is no biological difference between the Bantu and
the European of a degree sufficient to produce any difference, one way
or the other, in the fertility of the offspring of the two races, but
proper statistics, continued over several generations, will, of course,
be required to prove or disprove this conclusion.

The gravest, and, as I think, the most unjust of the many charges
brought against these people by an unthinking public, is that the
half-caste, wherever he is found, partakes of all the vices but of none
of the virtues of his parents. When we remember that in the towns of
South Africa the coloured people of necessity form the class that in the
nature of things is peculiarly exposed to the temptations of
prostitution and crime, then it becomes a matter for wonder that these
people are as good and as law-abiding as indeed they are. People who
know South Africa will admit that the coloured girl is from childhood
exposed to the temptation of loose-living far more than either the
Native girl in the kraal or the European girl in her home, and that the