142 THE MENDEL JOURNAL 



the obscene language and suggestive songs of the 

 slumsy Aud so on ; the italics are mine. "What 

 is bred in the bone will come out in the flesh," says 

 Mr. Mudge. Thus, he would seem to ask us to 

 believe that obscene language and suggestive songs 

 are biologically inheritable, instead of being trans- 

 mitted by bad example from bad companions. 



The facts, as stated by Mr. Mudge, seem to me to 

 show that the experiment failed, not because the 

 Parish Council attempted the impossible by trying to 

 improve certain individuals of a slum population by 

 changing their environment, but because it did not 

 effectively change the environment. For it is clear 

 that the children took with them, not only the 

 instincts of the slums, but its habits and customs. 

 Mr. Mudge, indeed, tells us that " the children were 

 sent into the island when quite young — some little 

 more than infants ;" but some at least of them must 

 have been old enough to have already learnt the 

 language and songs of their native place, unless 

 indeed they were allowed to revisit their first home 

 from time to time, which should not have been 

 alloAved. Again, the Parish Council seemed to have 

 failed through not making a proper selection. 

 Surely some of the children to whom special re- 

 ference is made might have been excluded with due 

 care. But the most important point seems to me to 

 be that they "swamped the place with an importa- 

 tion so great that seventy or eighty per cent, of the 

 school population was made up of the imported 

 element. In a word, the old and good environment 



