Fairchild: The American Genetic Association 



67 



thinking regarding the real difference 

 between the phenomena of environment 

 as distinguished from those of heredity, 

 the accomplishment would be a great 

 positive gain to our country. 



These differences can only be learned 

 through study. They cannot be taught 

 like so many of the superficial facts of 

 the advertising business by the dia- 

 grams or pictures of a single poster. 



The background of plants and ani- 

 mals and their behavior must be pre- 

 sented and the mind led up to the great 

 fact of heredity by a series of steps 

 which requires many pictures and illus- 

 trations to make clear. 



It is hard for the layman to believe 

 that you can cut off the tail of a white 

 mouse and its daughter and her daugh- 

 ter and all the daughters for a hundred 

 generations and of the sons as well 

 without producing a tailless breed of 

 white mice, whereas, if you hunt the 

 world over, you will probably find 

 somewhere a pair of mice which were 

 born without tails and, by breeding 

 these together and selecting the tailless 

 ones and mating these again, produce 

 in a few generations a breed of tailless 

 white mice. A variety of spineless cac- 

 tus cannot be produced by rubbing off 

 the spines and making cuttings from 

 the spineless portion. Identical twins 

 often remain through life ■ so much 

 alike that they are mistaken for each 

 other, whether they have lived in the 



same environment, or have led the same 

 kind of life or not. 



It is the propaganda for an under- 

 standing, a universal study of the great 

 forces which we know are here, that 

 our journal should undertake, and the 

 first great work lies in the elucidation 

 of the fundamental dift'erence which 

 exists between the changes wrought by 

 our environment and the limitations 

 which come through our heredity. 

 What experience can be more bitter 

 than that of offering all the possibili- 

 ties of the widest imaginable environ- 

 ment to a youth only to find that he 

 does not want them, that he simply 

 cannot rise to their utilizaion. "He 

 could if he would only try," sums up 

 too often a case of defective inherit- 

 ance. But these I know are too com- 

 plicated matters to be carelessly an- 

 swered in this way. They present the 

 most difficult problems in this new 

 science. They are in the very field 

 which the Journal must enter wath its 

 propaganda, viz., the field of the in- 

 heritance of mental and moral char- 

 acteristics, in which field the evidence 

 is rapidly accumulating, making it more 

 and more certain that they are in- 

 herited and are scarcely more easily 

 changed than a child who is slow at 

 figures can be made into a great mathe- 

 matician or one w'ho cannot carry a 

 tune can be developed into a great 

 composer. 



Preparing for Great Food-Raising Tasks of "After the War" 



"Strengthen agriculture's organiza- 

 tions for 1919." 



This slogan has gone from Washing- 

 ton to every State — in preparation for 

 the huge after-war tasks of American 

 farmers — and reports of responses in 

 every section of the country now are 

 coming to the United States Department 

 of Agriculture. 



Tens of thousands of farmers are 

 joining and making stronger the county 

 councils of agriculture, county farm 

 bureaus, and other local extension or- 

 ganizations that have come to hold a 

 place of vital importance in the organ- 

 ized agriculture of America. 



These local organizations of farmers 

 occupy much the same relation to the 

 counties as chambers of commerce 

 occupy to cities. They plan for pros- 

 perous and balanced agriculture, intro- 

 duce better farming methods, work fof 

 more and wider markets. They deal 

 especially with the work of the co- 

 operative agricultural extension agen- 

 cies, and are not intended to take the 

 place of the existing farmers' organiza- 

 tions, with which they sustain many 

 helpful and cordial relationships. — 

 Weekly Nexvs Letter. U. S. Dept. of 

 Agriculture. 



