76 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



It is a popular belief that the domestic cat differs in size only from 

 its cousins, tigers and lions. The fact is that the physical changes 

 brought about in - that animal by selection are by far less conspicuous 

 than the mental modification. Cats belong to the most ferocious fam- 

 ily of the carnivorous order, and no more effective natural weapon 

 can be found than their short jaw, with its long canines, its formidable 

 muscles and its transversal hinge. It was with this weapon that the 

 prehistoric machairodus killed the mammoth. It is the same weapon 

 which to-day enables the small puma to kill in a few seconds animals 

 of the size of an ox. The first consequence of the domestication of 

 cats has been the elimination by angry parents, generation after gen- 

 eration, of those cats which were most inclined to bite children when 

 teased by them. The result of that selection has been a race which 

 can still use its paws, but which seems almost unable to use on man 

 its best and only deadly weapon, although the restriction is entirely 

 of a mental order. 



It must be admitted as a sad truth that, while domestic animals are 

 specialized and brought to a high degree of efficiency, nothing is done 

 for the selection and improvement of man, and this in spite of the 

 fact that modern life calls for an increased specialization in every 

 domain. It can not be said that our statesmen are indifferent to the 

 future of our country, but, while they may know some Latin, Greek, 

 psychology, logic, ethics and metaphysics, they and their generation 

 are, as a rule, woefully ignorant of modern scientific thought and 

 truth. To bring education within the reach of all is, in their opinion, 

 the best way to prepare the coming of a superior race of Americans. 

 They are ignorant or forgetful of the fact that neither acquired knowl- 

 edge, nor acquired qualities or habits are ever transmitted to offspring. 

 For more than a thousand years the Chinese have been changing the 

 shape of the feet of their girls; for many generations the Flat Head 

 Indians have been altering the shape of the head of their children; 

 for over three thousand years the Jews have practised circumcision; 

 all that work has to be done over again in each generation, none of 

 the children born to these people ever showing any proof of the trans- 

 missibility of the characteristics acquired by father or mother or by 

 both. Selection would do for them, in a comparatively short time, 

 what mutilation has never done, will never do. It would do for us 

 what education can not do, yet millions are spent annually for educa- 

 tion and not a cent for selection. 



Not a cent for intelligent, well-directed selection. Some mental 

 selection is practised by man on man, but it is blind selection. Some- 

 times it improves the race; sometimes it makes it worse, and nobody 

 seems to care whether it acts one way or the other. The military 

 selection kills or keeps away from marriage ties not only the able- 



