not very prolific, whereas in Louisiana and Florida it decidedly is
so. In Jamaica and in Java the Mulatto cannot reproduce itself after
the third generation; but on the continent of America, as everybody
knows, the mixed race is now most numerous, and spreads generation
after generation without impediment. Equally various likewise in
various cases has been the fate of the mixed race between the white
man and the native American; sometimes it prospers, sometimes it
fails. And M. Quatrefages concludes his description thus: 'En
acceptant comme vraies toutes les observations qui tendent a faire
admettre qu'il en sera autrement dans les localites dont j'ai parle
plus haut, quelle est la conclusion a tirer de faits aussi peu
semblables? Evidemment, on est oblige de reconnaitre que le
developpement de la race mulatre est favorise, retarde, ou empeche
par des circonstances locales; en d'autres termes, qu'il depend des
influences exercees par l'ensemble des conditions d'existence, par
le MILIEU.' By which I understand him to mean that the mixture of
race sometimes brings out a form of character better suited than
either parent form to the place and time; that in such cases, by a
kind of natural selection, it dominates over both parents, and
perhaps supplants both, whereas in other cases the mixed race is not
as good then and there as other parent forms, and then it passes
away soon and of itself.

Early in history the continual mixtures by conquest were just so
many experiments in mixing races as are going on in South America
now. New races wandered into new districts, and half killed, half
mixed with the old races. And the result was doubtless as various
and as difficult to account for then as now; sometimes the crossing
answered, sometimes it failed. But when the mixture was at its best,
it must have excelled both parents in that of which so much has been