within the circle of each species crosses of individuals of different temperaments are highly beneficial; but out of this circle crosses of individuals of different species are always prejudicial."

The benefit to be derived from crosses of different constitutional temperaments of individuals, in the same species, is acknowledged by the laws of all nations, ancient and modern. These laws are only declaratory of the natural law that crosses of different temperaments, in intermarriages, are beneficial; because, if "it were natural and proper that identity of constitutional temperaments should intermarry, and that such intermarriages were beneficial to progeny, human enactments, prohibiting them within any degree of propinquity, would be impolitic and improper. But it is not only human law which recognises this principle; for the law of God is equally imperative to prohibit marriages of those in close affinity. Even among tribes so rude that they are under no restraint from human or revealed laws, the natural law operates with sufficient force to prevent alliances within certain degrees of propinquity. Thus it appears that intermarriages, within certain degrees of consanguinity, are prohibited by all laws natural, human, and divine. Exclusive of the natural abhorrence entertained by all men, to close alliances, the good policy of such laws must be evident to those who have paid the least attention to the practice of some families of marrying cousins, which very generally entails some misfortune upon progeny. So, too, in countries in which castes, nobility, and state policy, confine intermarriages, for a series of generations, to a particular class, if the class

should not be sufficiently numerous to admit of perfect crosses of temperaments, the progeny must degenerate. In countries which admit, as well by their laws, as by their customs, the utmost latitude to the operations of the natural law of sexual love, a few generations, however, produce an almost entire change of constitutional temperaments in progeny."

"It is at the first view astonishing," says Sir W. Blackstone, in his Commentaries on the Laws of England, book 2, chap. 14-"to consider the number of lineal ancestors which every man has, within no very great number of degrees: and so many different bloods is a man said to contain in his veins, as he hath lineal ancestors. Of these he hath two in the first ascending degree-his own parents; he hath four in the second-the parents of his father, and the parents of his mother; he hath eight in the third-the parents of his two grandfathers and two grandmothers; and by the same rule of progression, he hath one hundred and twenty-eight in the seventh; a thousand and twentyfour in the tenth; and at the twentieth degree, or the distance of twenty generations, every man hath above a million of ancestors, as common arithmetic will demonstrate."

Thus, according to the doctrine of the descent of blood, which was the doctrine before the works of Mr. Walker appeared, every human creature must, at the twentieth degree of descent, making no allowance for intermarriages in the same family, have in his veins above a million different kinds of blood, besides the many millions of different qualities the original pair of ancestors had from whom he reckons. But Mr. Walker says that the doctrine of the transmission of blood is absurd; and, indeed, he has very

*As the tables of lineal ancestors and collateral kindred, given by Blackstone in notes to the above chapter, may be interesting to future inquirers into the early population of countries, we furnish the two notes containing them. "This (the number of lineal ancestors) will appear surprising to those who are unacquainted with the increasing power of progressive numbers: but is palpably evident from the following table of geometrical progression, in which the first term is 2, and the denominator is also 2: or to speak more intelligibly, it is evident for that each of us has two ancestors in the first degree; the number of whom is doubled at every remove, because each of our

considerably shaken its foundations, as generally it is understood. He contends, and with considerable force, that parents always impart organizations, and moral and mental qualities, to progeny, by halves, in mass, without interference with each other; that is, that the human system is divided into two distinct parts, which he denominates the locomotive, and the vital systems; the animal instincts and passions, he connects with the locomotive, and the

ancestors has also two immediate ancestors of his own." The following table exhibits the number of lineal ancestors to the twentieth degree:

In regard to the number of kindred which every man has, Blackstone remarks: "If we only suppose each couple of our ancestors to have left, one with another, two children; and each of those children on an average to have left two more (and without such a supposition the human species must be daily diminishing); we shall find that all of us have now subsisting near two hundred and seventy millions of kindred in the fifteenth degree, at the same distance from the several common ancestors as ourselves are; besides those that are one or two descents nearer to, or farther from the common stock, who may amount to as many more. And if this calculation should appear incompatible with the number of inhabitants on the earth, it is because, by intermarriages among the several descendants from the same ancestor, a hundred or a thousand modes of consanguinity may be consolidated in one person, or he may be related to us in a

intellectual and moral powers he connects with the vital systems. According to this doctrine, during the whole twenty generations, the offspring have only been alternating systems, according to the relative vigor of parents. Children must be born with the moral and mental faculties of the parent who happened to bestow the vital system; and as this is generally the female, according to the theory, therefore these higher attributes of human nature chiefly hundred, or a thousand different ways." In a note, he adds-"this will swell more considerably than the former calculation; for here, though the first term is but 1, the denominator is 4; that is, there is one kinsman (a brother) in the first degree, who makes, with the prepositus, the two descendants from the first couple of ancestors; and in every other degree the number of kindred must be the quadruple of those in the degree which immediately precedes it. For, since each couple of ancestors has two descendants, who increase in a duplicate ratio, it will follow that the ratio in which all descendants increase downwards, must be double to that in which the ancestors increase upwards; but we have seen that the ancestors increase upwards in duplicate ratio: therefore, the descendants must increase downwards in a double duplicate, that is, a quadruple ratio."

He then furnishes the following table:

Collateral degrees.

depend on her. The theory is ingenious, and probably correct, as far as it goes; but the halves must be united by functions to constitute identity of organization; and these functions must be the joint gift of both parents. A consumptive father, and a healthy mother, may have a consumptive child, notwithstanding the father has given the locomotive, and the mother the vital system; which, if Mr. Walker's theory is rigidly correct, should never occur. Thus, then, granting this theory to be correct, as far as it goes, it requires something to be added to it to make it perfect. Call this something functions, blood, or whatever will designate the peculiar property, or quality, imparted jointly by both parents to form the peculiar constitutional temperament of offspring, or by any other name; yet there is certainly a combined influence produced upon children, by parents, imparting, in a greater or less degree, a compound of the moral and mental, as well as physical, character of both parents. Mulattoes generally partake of the joint character of both the parents, in a degree; though it is very generally observed that they possess the cunning and vices of the white father, and his passions, with the obtuse moral and mental qualities of the black mother. The same has been generally remarked of the half breed Indians, produced by a white father. The instances are so few in which the crosses have been made with a white mother, and they have hitherto been so seldom distinguished from those of a white father, that we cannot speak of them with the same certainty. We raised a mulatto girl, the child of a white mother, who, in every thing but color, was a perfect negro of the worst