170 The Journal 
port that nomadism is not a matter of 
social influences or of reading travel 
advertisements. ‘‘Whether a_ species 
tends to travel far or tends to stay near 
its home depends upon its constitu- 
tional factors—its instincts. The dif- 
ferences between men in respect to 
these points are as truly specific as the 
differences between swallows and grouse, 
and are as truly due to differences in 
inherited instincts.” 
But, it will be objected, the strength 
of the wandering instinct in a man 
varies. Once I wanted to join the 
Navy in order to “see the world;” then 
I stayed twenty years on the same job, 
quite contented. This alleged instinct of 
nomadism therefore cannot be really 
a constitutional trait, or it would not 
be subject to such fluctuations. 
On the contrary, Dr. Davenport 
answers, we find that even the birds do 
not migrate all the time—only twice a 
year. We would expect the instinct to 
show itself only periodically. And we 
have other good evidence that there 
really is an inherited trait of nomadism. 
We have already mentioned that the 
great apes have this instinct; and the 
basal instincts of these animals are the 
same as those of man. Then consider 
the primitive peoples and their migra- 
tory habits. If we look around the 
world we are driven to conclude that a 
wandering tendency—an absence of 
fixed abode—is widespread over the 
globe. “Indeed, it might be said that 
fixity of abode is a relatively recent 
acquisition, as yet only found in cer- 
tain peoples in which the sedentary 
habit is highly developed; and that, 
consequently, it is not to be wondered 
at if even in a non-nomadic people like 
most of the Chinese, the French, or the 
Swiss, the racial trait of nomadism 
should persist in certain families, or 
after having been eliminated, have 
crept in again.” 
The extraordinarily common tendency 
to run away which children show, as 
every mother knows to her sorrow, is 
another bit of evidence proving that 
nomadism is really an inborn trait. 
The early life of the child, it is assumed, 
repeats the early life of the race; there- 
of Heredity 
fore it is no surprise to us that children, 
“true to their function of revealing the 
past, sometimes almost as soon as they 
have acquired the upright habit of 
locomotion, as if intoxicated by ‘out- 
of-doors,’ start off and, by some inner 
impulse, go on and on with no idea of 
where or why, tempted by an open gate 
or by the instinct to follow a man or a 
vehicle, or as a just-hatched chick fol- 
lows any moving thing.’”” 
ADOLESCENT RUNAWAYS 
There is one more place where we 
must look for evidence. At the ado- 
lescent period the instincts are more 
highly developed than at any other 
time of life. If there is any wide- 
spread instinct of nomadism, it ought to 
show itself then. So it does. Kline, 
who collected 501 cases of runaways, 
found the greatest number of them 
occurred at the age of 15 years, and 
plenty more at 13 or 14. 
From such evidence, Dr. Davenport 
feels justified in concluding that nomad- 
ism is a racial trait, a matter of heredity. 
In modern America, which has lured to 
itself the restless and those in whom love 
of ancestral home is weak, we naturally 
expect to find many families showing 
the romadic trait; and he has collected 
the histories of 100 of these families, 
embracing 616 individuals, on which he 
bases the present study. 
A glance over the array of cases shows 
immediately that most of the nomads 
are - males. That is exactly what the 
reader would expect, no doubt. Not 
only is it easier for a man than a woman 
to ride the brake-beams, not only is it 
easier fora man than a woman to roam 
through a life of vagrancy and avoid 
arrest, not only is man’s courage of the 
kind which faces more readily the dan- 
gers and inconveniences of such a life; 
but, one would say, the nature of the 
male sex is such, and the nature of the 
female sex is such, that we would expect 
a life of nomadism to be more congenial 
to a man than a woman. Man is the 
active, restless, energetic, aggressive 
animal; woman is the contrary. We 
express the same idea in very superior 
language, nowadays, by saying that 
“2 Quoted by Davenport from G, Stanley Hall, Adolescence, Vol. II, p. 376; New York, 1904. 
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