390 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 



Pericles the old law was restored (451 B. C), but losses in the great 

 wars led to further laxity in practice, and though at the end of the 

 fifth century the strict rule was reenacted that a citizen must be of 

 citizen birth on both sides, the population by that time may well 

 have become largely mongrelized. 



Let me not be construed as arguing that mixture of races is an 

 evil, far from it. A population like our own, indeed, owes much of 

 its strength to the extreme diversity of its components, for they con- 

 tribute a corresponding abundance of aptitudes. Everything turns 

 on the nature of the ingredients brought in, and I am concerned 

 solely with the observation that these genetic disturbances lead ulti- 

 mately to great and usually unforeseen changes in the nature of tlie 

 population. 



Some experiments of this kind are going on at the present time, 

 in the United States, for example, on a very large scale. Our grand- 

 children may live to see the characteristics of the American popula- 

 tion entirely altered by the vast invasion of Italian and other South 

 European elements. We may expect that the Eastern States, and 

 especially New England, whose people still exhibit the fine Puritan 

 qualities, Avith their appropriate limitations, absorbing little of the 

 alien elements, will before long be in feelings and aptitudes very 

 notabh^^ differentiated from the rest. In Japan also, with the aboli- 

 tion of the feudal system and the rise of commercialism, a change in 

 population has begun which may be worthv of the attention of nat- 

 uralists in that country. Till the revolution the Samurai almost 

 always married within their own class, with the result, as I am in- 

 formed, that the caste had fairly recognizable features. The changes 

 of 18G8 and the consequent impoverishment of the Samurai have 

 brought about a beginning of disintegration wliich may not improb- 

 ably have perceptible effects. 



How many genetic vicissitudes has our oAvn peerage undergone. 

 Into the hard-fighting stock of medieval and Plantagenet times have 

 successively been crossed the cunning shrewdness of Tudor states- 

 men and courtiers, the numerous contributions of Charles II and 

 his concubines, reinforcing peculiar and persistent attributes which 

 popular imagination especially regards as the characteristic of peers, 

 ultimate^ the heroes of finance and industrialism. Definitely intel- 

 lectual elements have been sporadically added — with rare exceptions, 

 however — from the ranlcs of laAvyers and politicians. To this aris- 

 tocracy art, learning, and science have contributed sparse ingredi- 

 ents, but these mostly chosen for celibacy or childlessness. A re- 

 markable body of men, nevertheless ; with an average " horsepower," 

 as Samuel Butler would liave said, far exceeding that of any i-andom 

 sample of the middle class. If only man could be reproduced by 

 l>iidding what a simplification it would be. In vegetative repro- 



