[275] [The standard in France is, we believe, five feet.--EDITOR.] [276] _Peru_, 1846. [277] _Nicaragua: its People_, vol. ii, p. 153, New York, 1852. [278] _Essai sur l’Inégalité des Races Humaines_, Paris, 1852. [279] _Rapports du Physique et du Moral_, vol. i, p. 484. [280] M. Morel, _Traité des Dégénérescences_. [281] [“All races of mankind intermix, they are fertile, producing cross-breeds, mulattoes, mestizoes, etc., which again are productive. All human races constitute, therefore, on physiological principles, but one species, which is here identical with _genus humanum_.” So thinks Professor Rudolph Wagner, but his arguments are not very satisfactory. He refers varieties of race in a great measure to climatic influence. See _Creation of Man and Substance of the Mind_ (_Anthrop. Rev._, vol. i, p. 229).--EDITOR.] [282] Compare _Bulletins de la Société d’Anthropologie_, vol. iii, p. 175. [283] In applying these principles to family consanguinity, we may say in a general manner, that it will be favourable or not to the offspring according to the state of the parents. If the parents are perfectly healthy, and exempt from all commencing degeneracy, they can only give birth to children at least as healthy as themselves. If one of the two parents is tainted with a commencement of degeneracy, the descendant, in his quality of offspring, will perhaps bear the trace of this degeneracy, but sensibly weakened. If the two parents are separately tainted with a different commencement of degeneracy, one or the other ought to continue it in the child, only in a lesser degree. But if the same degeneracy has already tainted both the parents, the offspring will show it in a greater degree, and will tend towards entire disappearance. [284] Flourens, _Histoire des Travaux de Buffon_, p. 180. [285] [_On the Phenomena of Hybridity in the Genus Homo_, edited by C. Carter Blake, F.G.S., F.A.S.L.--EDITOR.] [286] Compare G. Pouchet, _Précis d’Histologie Humaine_, § 5. [287] “Ac Sylla quidem sodalis noster, fatus nos parva quæstione tanquam instrumento ingentem et gravem de origine mundi quæstionem subruere.” _Quæstionem Convivalium_, book ii, quest. 3; transl., edited by F. Didot, 1841. [288] Buffon said that (_Suppléments_, vol. iv, p. 335) this method of generation is not only the most frequent and the most general, but the most ancient, that is, the first and most universal one. Plutarch (_Quæst. Conviv._, book ii, quest. 3; transl., edited by F. Didot, 1841) makes the same remark: “Proinde probabile est primum ortum ex terra gignentis perfectione ac robore absolutum fuisse, nihilque indigentem hujusmodi instrumentis, receptaculis et vasis, qualia nunc ob imbecillitatem natura parit atque machinatur parientibus.” [289] It must not be forgotten, that organic substances are supposed to have been found even in the formation of certain aërolites. [290] É. Geoffroy, _Comptes Rendus des séances de l’Académie des Sciences_, vol. v, p. 193.