168 EVOLUTION AND ANIMAL LIFE 



the entire record of alleged facts must be set aside to make a 

 fair beginning. 



There are also many phenomena of transmitted qualities 

 that cannot be charged to heredity. Just as a sound mind de- 

 mands a sound body, so does a sound child demand a sound 

 mother. Bad nutrition before as well as after birth may neu- 

 tralize the most vigorous inheritance within the germ cell. A 

 child well conceived may yet be stunted in development. Even 

 the father may transmit weakness in development as a handicap 

 to hereditary strength. The many physical vicissitudes between 

 conception and birth may determine the rate of early growth 

 or the impetus of early development. In a sense, the im- 

 pulse of life comes from such sources outside the germ cell 

 and outside heredity. All powers may be affected by it. Per- 

 fect development demands the highest nutrition, an ideal 

 never reached. In such fashion the child may bear the in- 

 cubus of Ibsen's "Ghosts," for which it had no personal re- 

 sponsibility. " Spent passions and vanished sins " may impair 

 germ cells, male or female, as they injure the organs that 

 produce them. 



In a thoughtful article on problems of heredity (The Horse- 

 man, April 17, 1906), Mr. C. B. Whitford maintains that better 

 results in the trotting horse come from breeding from untrained 

 horses of good blood than from horses which have been elabo- 

 rately trained to the highest speed on the racecourse. 



"Trotting horses that are overbred show the effects of their inten- 

 sified breeding in a variety of ways. But the usual difficulty is ex- 

 treme nervousness and want of ability to stand training. Sometimes 

 a horse of this kind will show great promise when he is first hitched to 

 a sulky. He will show great flashes of speed and will have a smooth, 

 easy action and the trotting instinct well pronounced." 



But he is overnervous, lacks constitutional strength and will 

 not do well. 



" The trouble with a horse of this kind is that he has not inherited 

 the necessary fuel with which to create energy. He is 'burnt out' 

 by heredity. That which he needed to train on was so largely used 

 up by his ancestry in their process of development that they had not 

 enough to transmit to their progeny." 



