392 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 



the educational section, I may make the point of view of ns natu- 

 ralists clear. I take Mr. Holmes's pronomicement partl}^ because 

 he is an enthusiastic believer in the efficacy of nurture as opposed 

 to nature, and also because he illustrates his views by frequent 

 appeals to biological analogies ^vhich help us to a common ground. 

 Wheat badly cultivated will give a bad yield, though, as Mr. Holmes 

 truly says, wheat of the same strain in similar soil well cultivated 

 may give a good harvest. But, having witnessed the success of a 

 great natural teacher in helping unpromising peasant children to 

 develop their natural powers, he gives us another botanical parallel. 

 Assuming that the wild bullace is the origin of domesticated plums, 

 he tells us that by cultivation the bullace can no doubt be improved 

 so far as to become a better bullace, but by no means can the bullace 

 be made to bear plums. All this is sound biology ; but translating 

 these facts into the human analogy, he declares that the work of 

 the successful teacher shows that with man the facts are otherwise, 

 and that the average rustic child, whose normal ideal is "bullace- 

 hood," can become the rare exception, developing to a stage corre- 

 sponding with that of the plum. But the naturalist knows exactly 

 where the parallel is at fault. For the wheat and the bullace are 

 both breeding approximately true, whereas the human crop, like 

 jute and various cottons, is in a state of polymorphic mixture. The 

 population of many English villages may be compared with the crop 

 which would result from sowing a bushel of kernels gathered mostly 

 from the hedges, with an occasional few from an orchard. If any- 

 one asks hoAv it happens that there are any plum kernels in the sam- 

 ple at all, he may find the answer perhaps in spontaneous variation, 

 but more probably in the appearance of a long-hidden recessive. 

 For the want of that genetic variation, consisting probably, as I 

 have argued, in loss of inhibiting factors, by which the plum arose 

 from the wild form, neither food, nor education, nor hygiene can 

 in any waj^ atone. Many wild plants are half starved through com- 

 petition, and transferred to garden soil they groAV much bigger; so 

 good conditions might certainly enable the bullace population to 

 develop beyond the stunted physical and mental stature they com- 

 monly attain, but plums they can never be. Modern statesmanship 

 aims rightly at helping those wdio have got sown as wildings to 

 come into their proper class; but let not any one suppose such a 

 policy .democratic in its ultimate effects, for no course of action can 

 be more effective in strengthening the upper classes whilst weaken- 

 ing the lower. 



In all practical schemes for social reform the congenital diversity, 

 the essential polymorphism of all civilized communities, must be 

 recognized as a fundamental fact, and reformers should rather direct 

 their efforts to facilitating and rectifvinsr class distinctions than to 



