Why Children Run Away 
woman is relatively more anabolic and 
man katabolic. Whatever words one 
uses, the facts are indisputable; his- 
torically woman’s place is in the home 
(we use the words without any political 
implication) and man’s réle is that of 
the hunter and fighter. 
Under such conditions it is no sur- 
prise to us to find that there are more 
male than female nomads in Dr. Daven- 
port’s tables. If nomadism is really 
an instinct, we are quite prepared to 
find it associated with sex—a sex- 
limited trait. Nomadism might be 
considered as much a sex-limited trait 
as is a mustache. 
But Dr. Davenport does not adopt 
this obvious explanation, apparently* 
because there are a good many women 
nomads. Disregarding the fact that 
even women have some hair on the face, 
and some women have a great deal, he 
thinks that nomadism cannot be a sex- 
limited trait, since we find so many 
women displaying it. 
Now there are, it will be recalled, 
two ways in which an inherited char- 
acter can be associated with sex. 
First, it may be sex-limited; that is, it 
may be due to the secretions of the male 
sex-glands. Second, it may be sex- 
linked, that means according to current 
theories, that the factor for this trait 
“just happened”’ to get in the same 
chromosome with the factor which 
determines sex. So sex and a sex- 
linked character have to go together, 
but they are not due to the same cause, 
nor is one the cause of the other; their 
association is merely a coincidence. 
Evidently, nomadism is associated in 
some way with sex. As Dr. Davenport 
has ruled out the first and most obvious 
explanation—that it is sex-limited, he 
has only one other possibility? to ex- 
171 
plain the greater number of affected 
males. It must be a sex-linked trait, 
like color-blindness. 
TEST OF THE HYPOTBESIS 
Fortunately, it is easy to test the 
correctness of this hypothesis. With- 
out going at length into the theory of 
sex-linkage, we may say that it demands 
at least one simple result in the present 
case: if Davenport’s explanation is 
right, then matings where the father is 
nomadic and the mother neither no- 
madic nor of a nomadic family, must 
result in no nomadic offspring whatever. 
The boys cannot be nomads because 
they cannot inherit a sex-linked trait 
from their father, but only from their 
mother. As neither the mother, nor 
her family, in this case had it, she cannot 
transmit it to them. The girls cannot 
be nomadic in either case. In families 
where the father is a nomad and the 
mother stays at home supporting the 
children by taking in washing, or some- 
thing of the sort, the children must all 
have a perfectly domestic disposition, 
according to Davenport’s hypothesis; 
they will not run the streets at nights, or 
steal rides on freight cars, or go to sea, 
or take to the road, or do anything else 
that nomads do and well-ordered chil- 
dren do not. 
We turn to Davenport’s table 5, 
which lists the matings of this critical 
kind. It lists thirty-two boys and 
eighteen girls. Instead of no nomad 
boys and no nomad girls, of this num- 
ber, we find sixteen nomad boys and 
five nomad girls. 
The hypothesis does not hold good, 
and although Dr. Davenport makes an 
attempt to explain the discrepancy in 
several legitimate ways, the difference 
seems to the reviewer to be too big to 
3 Against the hypothesis that nomadism is essentially a male characteristic is, he says, “the 
fact that nomadism is by no means confined to the male sex; in certain matings, daughters as 
well as sons are nomadic. 
function of a particular type of mating.”’ 
that in which both parents are nomadic. 
alike, should be nomadic. 
families. 
The distribution of the nomadic trait among the offspring is, then, a 
The critical mating to test this hypothesis would be 
All the children from such a mating, girls and boys 
But Davenport’s table of matings of this type contains only four 
No sound conclusion can be drawn from such a small number; but even there, it is 
worth noting that he gets one non-nomadic child, where his hypothesis requires that there should 
be none whatever. 
4 That is, only one other possibility in heredity. Of course, it may be said that the difference 
is one of training, girls being kept at home with mother while boys are turned out to roam the 
streets with ‘the gang.” 
Probably this is a real factor in bringing about a larger number of 
nomadic men than women, but Dr. Davenport does not discuss it. 
