204 THE MENDEL JOURNAL 



and at some wives' husbands. This sad condition of affairs no 

 doubt has always, more or less, been with us. For always we 

 suppose there have been hasty youths of real worth, dissi- 

 mulating maidens of no civic value, and fools who believed that a 

 Lie could endure for the remainder of their lives. 



But some races seem to have instinctively possessed an eugenic 

 ideal. We do not allude to so-called savage tribes, such as those 

 described by Mr. Torday in this Journal, but to people of our own 

 kith and kin. Dr. Rutherfurd has been kind enough to send us 

 some quotations from an old book, which we think eminently 

 worth publishing as they afford a contrast between what we may 

 call the instinctive manifestation and the educative emergence of 

 eugenic conceptions. 



Dr. Rutherfurd says : " About 1725-6 a certain Captain Burt 

 was stationed in the Scottish Highlands in connection with the 

 making of General Wade's roads. A series of quaint descriptive 

 letters of his were (anonymously) published in London in 1754 

 under the title of ' Letters from A Gentleman in the North of 

 Scotland to His Friend in London, . . . .' In the fifth 

 letter occurs the following, which it must be remembered was 

 probably written about 1725 or 1726, although not published 

 until 1754." 



" ' The Men have more Regard to the Comeliness of their 

 posterity, than in those Countries where a large Fortune serves to 

 soften the hardest Features, and even to make the Crooked 

 straight ; and, indeed, their Definition of a fine Woman seems 

 chiefly to be directed to that Purpose ; for, after speaking of her 

 Face, they say, ' She's a fine, healthy, straight, strong, strapping 

 Lassie.' 



" ' I fancy now I hear one of our delicate Ladies say, " 'Tis just 

 so they would describe a Flanders' Mare." I am not for confound- 

 ing the Characters of the two Sexes one with another ; but I 

 should not care to have my Son a valetudinary being, partaking 

 of his Mother's nice Constitution. 



" ' I was once commending to a Lady of Fortune in London, 

 the upright, firm, yet easy Manner of tlie Ladies walking in Edin- 

 burgh. And when I had done, she fluttered her Fan, and with a 

 Kind of Disdain, mixed with Jealousy to hear them commended, 



she said, " Mr. , I do not at all wonder at that, they are used 



to tvalkr ' " 



