HEREDITY OR ENVIRONMENT 141 



missibility of characters acquired as the consequence 

 of a change of environment, by means of the change 

 they produce in their turn on the inheritable 

 environment of the race ; but rather he proceeds to 

 deny — what he seemed to have admitted in his first 

 paper — that it is not possible by a change of 

 environment to improve even the generation directly 

 affected. This he does by describing at some length 

 a disastrous " experiment " carried on for forty years 

 by the Glasgow Parish Council — an experiment 

 which he supposes is in accordance with my prin- 

 ciples. 



In this experiment, children were taken from the 

 slums of Glasgow and transported to a certain island 

 on the west of Scotland, and there, amid the sea 

 breezes and scenic displays of that beautiful and 

 romantic coast, were boarded out among the honest 

 crofters, in the hope that they would become good 

 citizens. But these hopes were doomed to disap- 

 pointment. The children, for the most part, grew 

 up to be very much the same kind of people they 

 would have been had they remained at home. They, 

 in fact, became the terror of the neighbourhood. 

 They would congregate in bands at night time, link 

 arms, and rush through the streets in serried ranks, 

 shouting, whistling, and gesticulating, driving all 

 before them. Where there were maid servants they 

 would collect in groups and " indulge In language 

 which is not of the Highlands, but of the Glasgotv 

 slufns.'' In a certain island, Avhere at one time only 

 ordinary human weakness prevailed, was ''heard 



