448 IOWA DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 



HEREDITARY PRECAUTIONS. 



D. L. Howard, Jefferson, Iowa. 

 Not many days ago a street fakir who appeared in our town made 

 the statement that men "were but reproducers," and as an illustration 

 cited a grain of wheat being placed in the ground that sprouted and re- 

 produced itself. Of course this gentleman had a point in view, and that 

 was to sell a panacea for all the ailments and troubles of mankind, some 

 secret compound, the formula of which had been buried ages ago with 

 some of the mummies in Egypt and by some accident had fallen into his 

 hands. And as a sort of an advertisement he was letting the people have 

 it at $1 a pint. He was a smooth talker. He accomplished what he wanted. 

 He sold his goods and I suppose that ere long the undertakers of our 

 city will have to take up some other occupation on account of the long 

 lives our people will live. 



I listened to this gentleman for some time because he was an in- 

 teresting speaker, and while I did not agree with him in his position 

 that man was but a reproducer in the sense only that a grain of seed re- 

 produces, he advanced one proposition that was a proven fact, towit: 

 That the ailments and deformities, the weaknesses and idiocies of man 

 sometimes seemed to be the most prominent in reproduction. 



I had but just received a letter from Brother Prine, with a copy of the 

 program of this meeting, and with it the first notice that I was on the 

 list. The subject assigned me, "Hereditary Precautions," seemed to me 

 to be of so much importance and of so wide a range that my mind was in 

 a sort of a mixup as to how to approach it. So while in this condition of 

 mind the speaker just referred to attracted my attention. The statement 

 that in the reproduction of mankind the ailments of man seemed to be the 

 easier fruit to produce started me into the channel of thought which I 

 now take up. The street speaker said nothing regarding the evolution of 

 mind and matter. He did not have to in order to sell to suckers this hid- 

 den mystery of prolonged life that had been revealed to him in some 

 way from ancient civilization. 



We read that in the beginning God created the heavens, the sea and 

 the dry land. He created the beasts of the field, the birds of the air, the 

 fish in the sea and all creeping things; the grass that covers the earth, 

 the trees of the forest and all verdure. And. last of all, created He man — 

 male and female created He them. He pronounced all His works good. 

 From this we take it that every animal and beast, bird, fish and creeping 

 thing was a perfect one of its species. Man He created in His own image. 

 What the lower animals must have looked like, if the theories of some 

 •volutionists are to be believed, we know not. For if, according to 

 Darwin, man sprang from a monkey, the beasts below him in the animal 

 scale must have been frightful looking objects. We will, however, not 

 quarrel with those who wish to think their first father a monkey, but 

 will be content to believe our Adam and Eve to have been in the image 

 of the Creator and second only to the angels themselves. We will admit, 

 though, that there may have been a monkey Adam and Eve and some room 



