Live Stock Breedey^s' Association. 101 



Woods does not recognize this himself, of the law of dominance. 

 For instance, either genius or insanity may be transmitted from 

 grandparent to grandchild without appearing in the intermediate 

 gnerations, presumably because in that intermediate generation it 

 met its dominant opposite. The law of segregation of character 

 pairs and of the consequent recombination is fully recognized by 

 Dr. Woods. For instance, if the individuals in the pedigree of a 

 family of children are uniformly of high intellectual ability or the 

 opposite, then all the children will be alike in this respect. On the 

 other hand if some of the ancestry is of one type and some of an- 

 other, then in the family of children we find some individuals of 

 both types, which is just what we should expect from the law of 

 recombination. But the evidence is even more conclusive. Accord- 

 ing to Galton's law, which was developed from the study of physical 

 characteristics, such as color of hair, color of the eye, stature, etc., 

 the degree of resemblance between parent and offspring is known 

 to be on the average 30 per cent. Taking the grades assigned by 

 Dr. Woods to the various individuals he studied and applying the 

 formula to them, the degree of resemblance in intellectual ability 

 between parents and offspring is exactly 30 per cent. The cor- 

 responding degree of resemblance for moral character is 29.57 per 

 cent, which is so near the exact result called for by theory as to 

 answer all practical purposes. In other words, the difference may 

 be set down to experimental error. It is clear, therefore, that the 

 native ability and the natural impulses of human beings are as 

 much a matter of heredity as are any physical characteristics. 



The following striking fact immediately confronts us w^hen we 

 recognize the truth of the above statement. Prodigious effort has 

 been made by the human race to better its condition, but this effort 

 has been wholly in the direction of improving the environment. 

 While Dr. Woods has shown that this is really an unimportant 

 factor in determining character and ability, it is true that when 

 environment is unfavorable it may prevent the development of 

 natural tendencies or may warp them, and it may also result in 

 great natural ability remaining practically useless for a lack of the 

 implements which a full development of intellectual powers would 

 place in its hands. But improving the environment does not from 

 generation to generation give better material for our schools to 

 work on. We have been dealing with the wrong problem. The 

 plain and evident course to pursue is for us to be more careful in 

 the choice of our parents and grandparents. 



It may be of interest to know that one state at least, namely, 



