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Read in the light of modern ideas on unit characters it is now one of the most important works on heredity and has already widespread and abiding influence on the philosophy of hybridism in general. But from its very nature and from the choice of the material made by Mendel, it is restricted to balanced or varietal crosses.
If I am not mistaken, he looked to these parts of his work to keep the whole alive till the time should come when the philosophical side of his writings should be understood and appreciated. Thus the goat breeds with the sheep, and may therefore serve as the text for a dissertation on hybridism, which is accordingly given in the preface to this animal.
Many of the cases of strongly marked varieties or doubtful species well deserve consideration; for several interesting lines of argument, from geographical distribution, analogical variation, hybridism, etc., have been brought to bear in the attempt to determine their rank; but space does not here permit me to discuss them.
'He is like the nightmare of a Viennese courier. 'He represents in little India in transition the monstrous hybridism of East and West, the Russian replied. 'It is we who can deal with Orientals. 'He has lost his own country and has not acquired any other. But he has a most complete hatred of his conquerors. Listen. He confided to me last night, said the other.
I have now been three whole months on one chapter on hybridism! I am astonished to see that you expect to remain out three or four years more: what a wonderful deal you will have seen; and what an interesting area, the grand Malay Archipelago and the richest parts of South America!
For, you see, if you have not done that you have not strictly fulfilled all the conditions of the problem; you have not shown that you can produce, by the cause assumed, all the phenomena which you have in nature. Here are the phenomena of Hybridism staring you in the face, and you cannot say, "I can, by selective modification, produce these same results."
There is, in fact, one set of these peculiarities which the theory of selective modification, as it stands at present, is not wholly competent to explain, and that is the group of phenomena which I mentioned to you under the name of Hybridism, and which I explained to consist in the sterility of the offspring of certain species when crossed one with another.
Now, while we should grant to every human being all the rights we claim for ourselves, and bear in mind the cases of individual excellence of colored people, we must, I think, admit that mulattoism is hybridism, and that it is unnatural and undesirable. It has been brought to its present formidable proportions by several causes, mainly by slavery.
The chapter on hybridism is most ingenious, able, and instructive. If sterility of crosses is a special original arrangement to prevent the confusion of species by mingling, as is generally assumed, then, since varieties cross readily and their offspring is fertile inter se, there is a fundamental distinction between varieties and species. Mr.
We have Cuvier and the mummies; M. Roulin and the domesticated animals of America; the difficulties presented by hybridism and by Palaeontology; Darwinism a 'rifacciamento' of De Maillet and Lamarck; Darwinism a system without a commencement, and its author bound to believe in M. Pouchet, etc. etc. How one knows it all by heart, and with what relief one reads at p. 65 "Je laisse M. Darwin!"
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