18983 Hereditary Tendencies 



interest with him, as with me, gave way rather 

 suddenly to a deeper one in living organisms - 

 things we could study intimately because we could 

 lay hands on them. I turned to flowers, he to shells. Eric's 

 At the age of eight, away from home and family for shells 

 the first time, he sent me a written list of the fossil 

 shells he had found in Santa Monica Canyon. There, 

 as the guest of Mr. George W. Edmond and with 

 encouragement from his host, he had matched the 

 pictures in Ralph Arnold's monograph on the fossil 

 mollusks of southern California. The relations of 

 genus and species he seemed to understand perfectly. 

 Two years later he modestly remarked to a family 

 friend: "I don't like to talk about it, but I know 

 more about shells than my father does." Which 

 was literally true. And I may add that his first 

 scientific paper, 'Notes on a Collection of Shells 

 from Trinidad, California," with descriptions of two 

 new species of Odostomia, and written at the age of 

 fifteen, was recently published by the United States 

 National Museum. 



In my daughter Barbara, who at seven years Barbara's 

 spontaneously took up the study of birds, the same 

 power of discrimination as to the meaning of natural 

 classification was even more perfectly developed. 

 The affinities of any newly acquired bird she seemed 

 to understand instinctively. For instance, when she 

 first held in her hand the glossy black Pbainopepla, 

 she declared that it belonged to the waxwing family, 

 a conclusion reached by ornithologists after much 

 discussion. One day, also, I brought home the skin of 

 the female of a rather insignificant-looking streaked 

 sparrow from southern California and left it without 

 explanation. I had not taught her to use the books 



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