168 



The Journal of Heredity 



road to the New Jerusalem! In this 

 country, so far as I am aware, there 

 have been only three cases where the 

 suffrage has been changed from a 

 broader to a narrower basis. In early 

 Massachusetts, it was limited by a 

 vote of all the colonists to church 

 members and property owners; in New 

 Jersey, woman suffrage was abolished 

 early in the nineteenth century; and in 

 Rhode Island, the property-owning qual- 

 ification of $75 was recently raised to 

 $300. 



In my opinion, we never shall have 

 good government until the suffrage is 

 limited to those having a certain educa- 

 tion, or paying a certain tax; perhaps 

 also allowing those to vote who are 

 willing to pay a fee for the privilege. 

 We never shall have good financial 

 management in cities where, as in Bos- 

 ton, 118,000 non-taxpayers spend the 

 money of 18,000 tax-payers. For, tak- 

 ing things on the average, as we always 

 have to do in sociological questions, the 

 liability to a tax implies a certain 

 measure of success and ability. That 

 is why the Bolshevist, who is a mentally 

 and nervously irritable person, filled 

 with hate in the form of envy, is so 

 against property as an institution. 



Limitation of the suffrage may seem 



impossible of accomplishment in these 

 times, when we are seeking the smallest 

 possible political unit, even as we try to 

 split up the atoms of physical matter; 

 and yet, if everyone would speak out 

 who desires it, the achievement might 

 not be so remote. Perhaps the most 

 pregnant saying of Goethe, which em- 

 bodied a generalization from his wide 

 study of biolog}^ and other sciences, was 

 that anything to succeed must have 

 ' ' Beschraenkung ' ' — limitation. Goethe 

 was not what I have called an expansile. 

 He would doubtless have recognized 

 that the chief danger of the American 

 people today is the tendency to follow 

 out logically abstract ideals without 

 reference to the concrete situation. 

 This, as LeBon has shown, is a ten- 

 dency indigenous to the Latin but not 

 to the Nordic spirit. We are developing 

 it partly through the dilution of our 

 national character by immigration, and 

 partly by hearkening to the catchwords 

 of expansile leaders and those who 

 wallow in humanitarian platitudes. 



Therefore we should all be grateful to 

 Mr. Ireland for stating the case so 

 clearly, and for his testimony to the 

 value of aristocracy, based on his long 

 and thorough study of various experi- 

 ments in government. ; 



Plant Breeder's Envelope 



The plant breeder's envelope, de- 

 scribed in the following paragraph, 

 worked admirably on tender succulent 

 flax plants and ought to be of use for 

 other delicate plants. It has the advan- 

 tages of being light in weight, insect 

 proof, moisture proof, and of being 

 readily adapted and used. (Fig. 6.) 



A piece of oiled paper is folded or 

 doubled the desired width, with an 

 additional inch or two which is to be 

 left unstitched to facilitate opening the 

 envelope. A sewing machine is used to 

 stitch off as many envelopes as the 

 length of the folded sheet will permit. 

 The envelopes are cut apart with 

 scissors and slit up through the middle 

 of the unstitched portion at the base. 

 At the crotch of this slit a hole is cut of 

 sufficient size for the plant stem to fit 

 snugly when enclosed. One half, sec- 



tion B, of the unstitched portion is'' 

 folded lengthwise towards the top of the 

 envelope. The other half, section A, is 

 folded on a forty-five degree slant over 

 the first half. Points c, d, and e coin- 

 cide, and at this corner where the folded 

 parts overlap a snap fastener such as is 

 used on women's dresses is used to 

 fasten the envelope base together. The 

 plant breeder's envelope is now in the 

 same position as when enclosing an 

 emasculated flower on the stem of a 

 plant. The unstitched portion at the 

 envelope base must be one-half, or less 

 than one-half, the width of the envelope 

 in length so that, when folded, there will 

 be no unstitched portion above the fold. 

 Robert L. Davis, 

 Scientific Assistant, Fiber Investi- 

 gations, U. S. Department of Agri- 

 culture, Washington, D. C. 



