HYBRIDISM AND MAN.

Otago Witness, Issue 1901, 10 July 1890, Page 18

HYBRIDISM AND MAN.

"THB MISSING LINK." I would tbat I the earth could roam, In comfort cross the sea's white foam, To gather spoils in far-off climes, Tde relics of the bygone times ; Take notes from Nature at her best, Bead, mark, and inwardly digest ; Explore the rocky dspths below, With anxious care to search and know The mystery of our wondrous world, Not yet to human mind unfurled. By study of all things around, Above, below, and under ground : And if perchance I hap should find Deep buried in the earth's hard rind That long-lost clue to human raoe, The missing link that's out of place, What stories then I could unfold By our great writers still untold ! Alaß 1 man's life is all too short - We come, we go, our work is naught. Taylob White. June 27 , 1890. TO THE EDITOR. Sir,— l have to thank the gentlemen who replied to my former letter of Ist May both through your columns and privately. As hybridism is a subject little understood, and may be called new ground, I hope further information may be tendered. Curiously enough, I have accidentally, in reading another work, obtained a clue to guide me to the book wherein Is the article on fertile hybrids between sheep and goats. May I ask you to favour ua by looking for the subject in' Gay's •• Hist, de Ohile," vol I, p. 4(56, Agriculture 1862, and, as it is a short artiole, giving a reprint in your paper, for I have not the opportunity to Bee it otherwise —[We unfortunately have not the work at hand. - Ed.] One of your correspondents proposed the consideration of the various types of mankiod in relation to hybridUm. With the help of a crib from " Darwinism," by A. E. Wallace, I will take up the subject, first giving Mr Wallace's remarks on man and whence derived:— "To anyone who considers the structure of man's body, even In the most superficial manner, it must be evident tbat it is the body of an animal differing greatly, it is true, from the bodies of all other animals, but agreeing with them in all essential features. The bony structure of man claeßes him as a vertebrate ; the m >de of suckling bis young olaseea him as a mammal; his blood, muscles, and nerves, the structure of his heart with its veins and arteries, his lungs and his whole respiratory and circulatory systems, all closely correspond to those of other mammals, and are almost identical with them. He possesses the same number of limbs, terminating in the same number of digits as belong fundamentally to the mammalian olass," &0. If then we have good reason to believe that every existing group of mammalia has descended from some common ancestral form, it would be in the highest degree improbable that man, agreeing with them so closely in every detail of his struoture, should have had some quite distinct mode of origin. Let us then see what other evidence bears upon the question, and whether it is sufficient to convert tbe probability of his animal origin into a practical certainty. Professor Huxley remarks *• "In conclusion, I may say that the fosill remains of man hitherto discovered do not seem to me to take us appreciably nearer to the lower pithecoid form (apes) by the modification of which he has become what he is."

Wallace says : " The evidence of the antiquity of man himself is also scanty, and takes us but very little way baok into the past. . . . The facts now very briefly summarised amount almost to a demonstration that man in his bodily structure has been derived from the lower animals, of which he is the culminating development. . . . There remains only the great Euro-Asiatic continent and its enormous plateaux extending from Persia right across Thibet and Siberia to Manchuria, to afford an area some part or other of whioh probably offered suitable conditions, in the late Miocene or early Pliocene times, for the development of ancestral man. In this area we still find that type of mankind, the Mongolian, &o. . . . Thereafter at very loDg intervals successive waves of migration carried him into every part of the habitable globe, and by oonqueßt and intermixture led ultimately to that puzzling gradation of types which the ethnologist in vain seeks to unravel. ... I accept Mr Darwin's conclusions tbat man is descended from an ancestral form common to man and the anthropoid apes. . . . The special faculties we have been discussing (mathematical, musical, and artistic) clearly point to the existence in man of something which he has not derived from his animal progenitora -something we may best refer to as being a spiritual essence or nature capable of progressive development under favourable conditions. We thus find tbat the Darwinian theory, carried out to its extreme conclusion, not only does not oppose but lends a decided support to a belief in the spiritual nature of man. It shows us how man's body may have been developed from tbat of a lower animal form under the law of natural selection, but it also teaches vi that we possess intellectual and moral faculties, which could not have been so developed but must have had another origin. We can only find an adequate cause in the unseen universe of spirit."

I agree with Mr Wallace as to the Mongolian race being of great antiquity, possibly dating further back than any other existing type of mankind. They certainly can claim to be the oldest semicivilised people in the world, or at least to be one that never lapsed to the original barbarism, though never progressing beyond a certain point in arts or science. The Mongol in bis native land has a wider range of climate than other original races, his country stretching from the south temperate zone, through the tropics, almost to the Arctic circle, and yet he returns his individuality in all climes. He appears to have the oldest records of civilisation, and to have been the same in character and civilisation as now, looking back as far as written history or tradition reaches. But can the Caucasian be an offshoot from the Mongolian? It does not seem likely. We have history of our Caucasian ancestors, or at least the European branch of that type, as barbarian tribes, with no knowledge of art, when at that very same time the Mongolian was just as forward in civilisation as he is at the present time. The Brahmin and Egyptian show proofs of early civilisation, but not to compare in point of date with that of the Chinese,

There appears no trace satisfactorily showing that any one type of man has been evolved or derived from any other distinct type ; neither is there proof of the amalgamation of any two types producing a new and distinct type, 'or hybrid races. Sterility is popularly supposed to be one distinct proof of hybridity; yet all types of mankind are fertile one with the other, and there is no reliable reoord showing that their offspring are not equally fertile even amongst themselves. Man, as also birds and animals ; prefer to associate with those of their own kind. If by force of circumstances a few intermix, the produce are soon again absorbed into one or other of the pure race. With man the Caucasian would seem to have more individuality and power of vitality of all the types of mankind, and capacity to absorb any of the other typos with whom it may come in contact. If tbe Caucasian colonises any land where the native race appears unable to come under the requirements of civilleation, the original race is not absorbed by intermarriage, but gradually dies out. Take, for instance, the North Americau Indian and the Australian black. JStjll the tho African pegroes

when removed from their native land to Americana less suitable climate, have held their own , and atiow no sign of absorption or decadence, and for all they have partly intermarried no new type has been produced nor has one type appreciably influenced th-e' other. The offspring resulting from a union of these two types are equal to the mean of the parents, with undiminished fertility. We have a notab'e instance of alliance of two distinct types in thePicfcairn Islanders, the Caucasian and the Polynesian. The English mutineers of the Bounty took Tahitian wives, and formed a settlement on the small uninhabited island of Pitcairn, situated in the South Pacific. Their descendants are a fine healthy people, but appear to favour the superior race, the Gauoaaian, rather than to revert to the likene»s of their Polynasian ancestors. Living isolated on their island home, and some now at Norfolk Island, they have formed alliances strictly among themselves. I believe to all intents and purposes they may be said to be a slightly darkskinned Caucasian type. I have heard It said that the offspring of Caucasian and Maori are more or less barren inter se, but I think without sufficient proof. In reality they are again absorbed in either pure race. , Climatic influences are another chief factor in keeping the various types of man distinct. The Bsqulmo cannot live long even in temperate climeß, and Europeans in Tuelia require to send their children to hill districts or to return them to the country of their ancestors. It seem* impossible to read the history of the varieties of man by the theory of evolution and acquired sterility by the surr vival'of the fittest, for all are fertile one with the other, and are ultimately absorbed by the dominant variety in each district unless kept apart by social habits or refigloub observances. I therefore maintain that there is no proof ot hybridity in connection with man, neither can we form any reasonable theory showing how the various types of man originated one from the other. Place Caucasians in a 1 torrid zone and their offspring are not acclimatised and changed to negroes, but rather show signs of dying out. Nor has the long residenoe in America ohanged the negro to a Caucasian or an Indian. Neither do casual instances of reversion occur such as white parents producing a negro child or negro parents originating a Caucasian, which would likely be the result if one type was derived from the other or from the same original ancestor. But, as this 1b rather againßt my own conclusions, I will go no further into the subject.— Yours, &0., _ TAYLOR WHITB. Wimbledon, Hawke's Bay, June 29. P.S.— ln my experiment with hybird ducks the young of the first cross partook separately of the likeness and character of either pure parent ; the main resembled the domestic duck in size and colour, and a few were small and of a timid habit, and to all appearance were the grey duck of New Zealand. Both forms preferred to live apart or with either pure race. If the alllanae of the Caucasian and the negro produced a similar result, we might expect some of the children to be pure whites with an occasional negro child intervening.— F. W.