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imitation, and partly by the same cause being potent, we can 
fathom the reason for nearly all the actions and habits of 
infants and children, and even for some of the strange ways 
of older persons (the fear of women for snakes). We shall 
thus see that the popular voice which applies the term “young 
monkey” to children is much nearer the truth than most people 
are inclined to admit; and if again we ask why these various 
habits arose in these ancestors it can easily be answered that 
they were the necessary results of environment, in the same 
way that the habits of adults at the present day are moulded 
by the exigencies of their surroundings. 
Some of the habits of children seem to point not so much 
to monkeys as even to a lower grade in the scale. There can 
be no doubt that such characters are not spontaneous but have 
been inherited. For instance, the fondness of children for 
bones is curious. A child, I believe, seldom refuses a bone, 
even after the very fullest meal; and if it be allowed to run 
out of doors to gnaw it, its delight is increased tenfold. More 
remarkable still however is the fact that a sick child will 
greedily gnaw a bone when it refuses all other food—yet this 
is but an illustration of the law that atavic characters are 
more developed in a feeble state of the body. 
It is well known that animals have a considerable distaste 
to eating or drinking after one another. Domestic animals, 
horses, sheep, and cattle, unless driven by hunger, will exhibit 
this tendency—in fact, horses are extremely particular about 
not drinking water touched by another horse. Children shew 
the same trait of character—they are extremely particular 
about not eating or drinking one after another. This cannot 
arise from any habit of cleanliness, as in their elders; for in 
the matter of want of cleanly habits children approximate 
closely to lower animals. It seems to me however that Natural 
Selection strengthened this character in the lower animals—that 
those who were particular not to eat or drink after others 
thereby escaped contracting diseases. Inheritance has pre- 
served this trait in our children. 
ee es 
