The influence of race intermixture in the production of degeneracy is easily settled. Basing their opinion on the notorious sterility of the hybrid offspring of the horse and ass, certain biologists have assumed like results in man and have cited the alleged absence of Australian half-breeds in evidence. Since the hare and rabbit, dog and wolf, sheep and goat produce breeds intermediate between the parents, fertile while environment is unchanged, horse and ass sterility cannot be accepted as of much value in settling the question. Recent researches have shown that the half-breeds which survived birth among the Australians were killed in accordance with tribal usages regulating population in accordance with food supply. Whether the results of race intermixture prove degenerate or not will turn largely on the environment. The mulatto is certainly better adapted to the white environment than the pure negro, albeit less so than the white. That race intermixture may, however, determine degeneration, is shown by the relapse into voodooism and cannibalism of the Haiti and Louisiana French hybrids, and the Anglo-Saxon hybrids of Liberia, who contrast disadvantageously with the Arabianised Moslem Mandingoes and Veys, which last have advanced so far as to devise a system of writing. The extent of the influence of environment is shown in the career of the Dumas family, which is of Haitian-negro origin. The grandfather was a general in the French army, the father and son were two stars in the literary firmament. The sculptor, Edmonia Lewis, was of similar stock to these. Evidences of degeneracy were rare among the Marshpee Indians, as I have elsewhere shown.[146]