CAUSES WHICH CREATE SCIENTIFIC MEN. 7 i 



ly said in French than in German. Precisely in the same way English 

 heats French. Our sentences don't even require to he finished in order 

 to he understood, because the leading ideas come out first ; but, as for 

 old-fashioned tongues, their roundabout construction would be perfect- 

 ly intolerable. Fancy languages, like Latin and Greek, in which peo- 

 ple did not say " yes " or " no." M. de Candolle is very disrespectful 

 to classical Latin. He says that one must have gone throuo-h the 

 schools not to be impressed by its ridiculous construction. Translate 

 an ode of Horace literally to an unlettered artisan, keeping each word 

 in its place, and it will produce the effect upon him of a building in 

 which the hall-door was up in the third story. It is no longer a pos- 

 sible language, even in poetry. 



I have only space for one more of the many subjects touched upon 

 in his book that of acquired habits being transmitted hereditarily 

 and which has also formed the subject of a recent essay by Dr. Carpen- 

 ter. That some acquired habits in dogs are transmitted appears cer- 

 tain, but the number is very small, and we have no idea of the cause 

 of their limitation. "With man they are fewer still ; indeed, it is diffi- 

 cult to point out any one, to the acceptance of which some objection 

 may not be offered. Both M. de Candolle and Dr. Carpenter have 

 spoken of the idiocy and other forms of nervous disorder which, be- 

 yond all doubt, afflict the children of drunkards. Here, then, appears 

 an instance based on thousands of observations at lunatic asylums and 

 elsewhere, in which an acquired habit of drunkenness, which ruins the 

 will and nerves of the parent, appears to be transmitted hereditarily 

 to the child. For my own part, I hesitate in drawing this conclusion, 

 because there is a simpler reason. The fluids in an habitual drunkard's 

 body, and all the secretions, are tainted with alcohol; consequently 

 the unborn child of such a woman must be an habitual drunkard also. 

 The unfortunate infant takes its dram by diffusion, and is compulsorily 

 intoxicated from its earliest existence. What wonder that its consti- 

 tution is ruined, and that it is born with unstrung nerves, or idiotic or 

 insane ? And just the same influence might be expected to poison 

 the reproductive elements of either sex. I am also informed, but have 

 not yet such data as I could wish, that children of recent teetotallers 

 who were formerly drunkards are born healthy. If this be really the 

 case, it seems to settle the question, and to show that we must not rely 

 upon the above-mentioned facts as evidence of a once-acquired habit 

 being hereditarily transmitted. Fortnightly JSeview. 



