[ l'^5 ] 



Xcavc0 from m^ 1Rote:^Bool^. 



By Mrs. Alice Bodington, British Columbia. 



SOME INSTANCES OF THE INFLUENCE OF THE 

 ENVIRONMENT IN PRODUCING RACE PECULIARITIES. 



I. — Cats and Rats in Cold Storage Warehouses. 

 2. — The Paradise Fish of Japan. 

 3. — The Indian Ghost Flower. (Plate XI.) 



MR. Herbert Spencer, in his chapter on Heredity, says 

 that, "excluding those inductions that have been so fully 

 verified as to rank with exact science, there are no induc- 

 tions so trustworthy as those which have undergone the mercantile 

 test. When we have thousands of men whose profit or loss 

 depends on the truth of the inferences they draw from simple and 

 perpetually repeated observations ; and, when we find that the 

 inference arrived at and handed down from generation to genera- 

 tion of these deeply interested observers has become an unshake- 

 able conviction, we may accept it without hesitation. In breeders 

 of animals we have such a class led by such experiences, and 

 entertaining such a conviction — the conviction that minor peculiari- 

 ties of organisation are inherited as well as major peculiarities." '■' 



With the remembrance of this chapter in my mind, I was 

 particularly interested in an account of the development of a 

 peculiar breed of cats in the "cold storage" warehouses of 

 Pittsburg, Pennsylvaniat ; these warehouses being maintained 

 constantly at a temperature below freezing point. At first, no rats 

 could maintain existence under such Arctic conditions, a most 

 convenient state of things where toothsome eatables are kept. 

 But in a few months nature proved herself equal to the occasion, 

 and a breed of rats appeared which could withstand the low tem- 

 perature. Not only were their bodies clothed, as might be 

 expected, with remarkably long and thick fur, but even their tails 

 were covered with a thick growth of hair. Dr. Manley Miles, in 

 a paper read at the Brooklyn Meeting of the A.A.A.S., August, 



* Principles of Biology^ Vol. I., p. 241. 

 t Pittsburg Despatch, quoted in Public Opinion. 



