Dr. Watson F. Quinby of Wilmington has written an odd pamphlet on mongrelism in races. His belief is that population tends to become homogeneous, but this is not an averaging process. When two races mingle and intermarry, the mongrel product does not exhibit the balanced characteristics of both, but the traits of the higher race are absorbed and hid in those of the lower. Asia, he says, "was formerly powerful, with white peoples all along its northern and eastern borders, and far into the interior. But they first enslaved the black race, then mingled their blood, and have finally become merged in them." The resulting mongrel people always lacks the intellectual force necessary to maintain the civilization of the higher. Arts decline and national decay sets in. In this way is explained the existence of noble ruins among inefficient and barbarous nations, who practise a much ruder style of architecture. The Mexicans are the type of this retrogression. Dr. Quinby predicts for them an increasing decline until Aztec civilization is restored. If the Doctor's theories could be established, there are enthusiastic ethnologists who would not hesitate to say that the Mexicans could not be put to a better use than this. Shut them up and compel them to breed themselves back into Aztecs! Dr. Quinby's speculations are, to a great extent, based on studies of language, and of lingual affinities he is a bold, not to say reckless, expounder. Some of his work reads as if Mark Twain had turned philologist. For instance: "Eighty miles from the mouth of the Indus was a place called Hingliz. The people of this part celebrate the festival of Bhavani on the first day of May, when their custom is to erect a pole in the field and adorn it with pendants and garlands. They also celebrate another festival on the last day of March, called Huli (Phulee), when they amuse themselves by sending one another on foolish errands. _All this has a very Hinglish look(!)._ This is probably the place where the Hinglish people came from, for though the Romans called themselves angles, they call themselves English." * * * * *