b. A young woman, residing in Edinburgh, and born of white (Scottish) parents, but whose mother some time previous to her marriage had a natural (Mulatto) child, by a negro-servant, in Edinburgh, exhibits distinct traces of the negro. Dr. Simpson, whose patient the young woman at one time was, has had no recent opportunities of satisfying himself as to the precise extent to which the negro character prevails in her features; but he recollects being struck with the resemblance, and noticed particularly that the hair had the qualities characteristic of the negro.
c. Mrs. ——, apparently perfectly free from scrofula, married a man who died of phthisis; she had one child by him, which also died of phthisis. She next married a person who was to all appearance equally healthy as herself, and had two children by him, one of which died of phthisis, the other of tubercular mesenteric disease—having, at the same time, scrofulous ulceration of the under extremity.
There are the elements of a theory here; especially if they be taken along with certain phænomena, well-known to the breeders of race-horses—the theory being, that the mixture of the distinctive characters of different divisions of mankind may be greater than the intermixture itself. I give no opinion on the data. I merely illustrate an ethnological question—one out of many.
FOOTNOTES
[3] From the Greek word (ἦθος) ethos = character.
[4] Called by Comte Sociology, a name half Latin and half Greek, and consequently too barbarous to be used, if its use can be avoided.
[5] Knox, Races of Men, pp. 73, 74.
[6] On the Osteology of the Great Chimpanzee. By Professor Owen, in the Philosophical Transactions.