Mixed Race Studies

…The least proximate types of the human species are the Anglo-Saxon and the negro. Their original homes are in widely separated regions of the earth, and neither race can establish itself in the home of the other. They differ in form and size of cranium, in the colour and texture of the skin, in the character and colour of the hair, and in intelligence.

The negro seems seldom to develop in intelligence beyond childhood. Havelock Ellis says* :—” The child of many African races is scarcely if at all less intelligent than the European child ; but while the African as he grows up becomes stupid and obtuse, and his whole social life falls into a state of hide-bound routine, the European retains much of his childlike vivacity.” they are mated. The offspring of the Anglo-Saxon and the negro are fertile when bred inter se, but in a less degree than when coupled with the parent races. The fertility of mulattoes decreases with each succeeding generation, and it is said they frequently die out in the fourth. The same thing is said to occur when the mulattoes are bred to the white race, but when they are bred to the negro they are more fertile, and the perfect negro type is reached in a few generations.

Dr. J. C. Nott, who resided for many years in the southern portion of the United States, and consequently had many opportunities of studying the negroes and their mulatto offspring, puts forward the following propositions respecting the mulattoes, the offspring of the strictly white race—i.e., the Anglo-Saxon or Teuton—and the true negro* :—

1. “That mulattoes are the shortest-lived of any class of the human race.
2. That mulattoes are intermediate in intelligence between the blacks and whites.
3. That they are less capable of undergoing fatigue and hardship than either blacks or whites.
4. That the mulatto women are peculiarly delicate, and subject to a variety of chronic diseases. That they are bad breeders, bad nurses, liable to abortion, and that their children generally die young.
5. That when mulattoes intermarry they are less prolific than when crossed on the parent stocks.
6. That when a negro man married a white woman the offspring partook more largely of the negro type than when the reverse connection had effect.
7. That mulattoes, like negroes, although unacclimatized, enjoy extraordinary exemption from yellow fever when brought to Charles town, Savannah, Mobile, or New Orleans.”

Dr. Nott noticed that mulattoes the offspring of the races of Southern Europe and the negro were often long-lived and prolific.

Dr. Morton, President of the Academy of Natural Sciences, Philadelphia, classed species according to their disparity or affinity, in the following manner :— “Remote species of the same genus are those among which hybrids are never produced. Allied species produce inter se an infertile offspring. Proximate species produce with each other a fertile offspring.”

George A. Brown, Studies in stock breeding: An inquiry into the various phenomena connected with the breeding of the domestic animals, Walker, May and Co., Printers, 1902: 383-385.