IMPROVEMENT OF TEE HUMAN BREED. 233 



child and when helpless through old age, the other its earnings as boy 

 and mau. On balancing the two sides of the account the value of the 

 baby was found to be five pounds. On a similar principle, the worth 

 of an X-class baby would be reckoned in thousands of pounds. Some 

 such 'talented' folk fail, but most succeed, and many succeed greatly. 

 They found great industries, establish vast undertakings, increase 

 the wealth of multitudes and amass large fortunes for themselves. 

 Others, whether they be rich or poor, are the guides and light of the 

 nation, raising its tone, enlightening its difficulties and imposing its 

 ideals. The great gain that England received through the immigra- 

 tion of the Huguenots would be insignificant to what she would derive 

 from an annual addition of a few hundred children of the classes W 

 and X. I have tried, but not yet succeeded to my satisfaction, to 

 make an approximate estimate of the worth of a child at birth accord- 

 ing to the class he is destined to occupy when adult. It is an eminently 

 important subject for future investigators, for the amount of care and 

 cost that might profitably be expended in improving the race clearly 

 depends on its result. 



Descent of Qualities in a Population. 



Let us now endeavor to obtain a correct understanding of the 

 way in which the varying qualities of each generation are derived from 

 those of its predecessor. How many, for example, of the V class in 

 the offspring come respectively from the V, U, T, S and other classes 

 of parentage? The means of calculating this question for a normal 

 population are given fully in my 'Natural Inheritance.' There are 

 three main senses in which the word parentage might be used. They 

 differ widely, so the calculations must be modified accordingly. (1) 

 The amount of the quality or faculty in question may be known in each 

 parent. (2) It may be known in only one parent. (3) The two par- 

 ents may belong to the same class, a V-class father in the scale of 

 male classification always marrying a V-class mother, occupying iden- 

 tically the same position in the scale of female classification. 



I select this last case to work out as being the one with which we 

 shall here be chiefly concerned. It has the further merit of escaping 

 some tedious preliminary details about converting female faculties into 

 their corresponding male equivalents, before men and women can be 

 treated statistically on equal terms. I shall assume in what follows 

 that we are dealing with an ideal population, in which all marriages 

 are equally fertile, and which is statistically the same in successive 

 generations both in numbers and in qualities, so many per cent, being 

 always this, so many always that, and so on. Further, I shall take no 

 notice of offspring who die before they reach the age of marriage, nor 

 shall I regard the slight numerical inequality of the sexes, but will 



