1 84 SCIENCE PROGRESS 



Much the same thing happened with the early prize-winning 

 Shorthorns, and breeders are now again coming back to the 

 view that mixture of blood is quite unnecessary. If they are 

 right, if no one can discover a weakness — say a pronounced 

 tendenc}' to tuberculosis — in these close-bred beasts, the fact 

 seems to destroy the Platonic analogy between the breeding of 

 beasts and men. One wonders if Professor Ridgeway — whose 

 Presidential speech might have been cut from the Republic 

 — noticed this point. It would form a pretty comment on the 

 vigorous passage in which he rated the State for being a bad 

 stockmaster and refusing to breed wholly or principally from 

 the middle class. 



In our community the children of the working classes are 

 educated at the cost of the State, the offspring of the wastrels 

 are given free meals, and already there are demands that they 

 shall be clothed at the expense of the ratepayers, and that the 

 parents shall even be paid for providing them with lodging. 

 It is not impossible that before long these demands will be con- 

 ceded by either party in the State. The heavy additional expense 

 incurred in this policy falls upon the middle-class ratepayers 

 and taxpayers, who have to feed, educate, and clothe their own 

 children at their own expense. It may be said that they can get 

 free education for their children by sending them to the State 

 schools ; but this is to level down instead of to level up, for if 

 they do so they will be lowering the general morale of their 

 own class, the most priceless asset of the nation. The heavy 

 burden of taxation entailed by this policy, falling as it does with 

 special weight on the middle classes, renders it more difficult 

 each year for the young men and the young women in that 

 class to marry before thirty, for they naturally shrink from the 

 expense of bringing up large or even moderate-sized families. 

 We need not then wonder at the falling-off in the rate of increase 

 of the middle classes. Our legislators are bad stockmasters, for 

 they are selecting to continue the race the most unfit physically 

 and morally, whilst they discourage more and more the increase 

 of what we have proved to be the outcome of a long process of 

 natural selection. The present policy therefore tends to reduce 

 that which in all ages has been the mainstay of every State, the 

 middle class. 



The problem of heredity was discussed in one form or another 

 in five of the sections, and chiefly in relation to Mendelism. 

 One almost expected Professor Joly to insert F 2 after radium 

 when he described it as the grandson of uranium. Many 

 zoologists are among the converts, including Mr. Sidney 



