400 ANNUAL REPOKT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1913. 



and the portraits of Charles V show this peculiarity most strongly, 

 and it is still found more or less characterized in the great majority 

 of members of royal families, as much among the great houses that 

 Ave have mentioned as on the small thrones of more recent founda- 

 tion where they are at once fixed by repeated alliances. 



You see, the peculiarities peraist in successive generations only 

 when they exist at the same time in the paternal and mMernal an- 

 cestors. In the inverse case they rapidly disappear. 



In what concerns the intellectual faculties we reach the same con- 

 clusions. We could cite numerous examples of families where the 

 same order of talents has appeared among several members. Among 

 literateurs, the two Plinys (uncle and nephew), Seneca and his 

 nephew Lucien, the two Corneille brothers and their nephew Fonte- 

 nelle, the two Chenier brothers, the two Musset brothers, the two 

 Alexandre Dumas, father and son, and many others. Among learned 

 m£ii we find the physicists Becquerel, grandfather, father^ son, and 

 gi'andson ; the mathematicians Bernouilli, uncle and three nephews or 

 grandnephews, and the naturalists Geoffroy-Saint-Hilaire, Isodore 

 and Etienne, father and son. Among painters are the three Vernet, 

 Carl, Joseph, and Horace. We could lengthen the list very much, 

 but the persistency of high talent seldom persists more than three 

 generations. In order that this may be otherwise, the inheritance of 

 a certain talent must be maintained by the union of families equally 

 endowed. We could mention several examples of this. Thus the 

 Darwin and the Galton families, both of which include eminent 

 naturalists, have been thus imited repeatedly. Here we find the per- 

 sistence of remarkable faculties relative to natural history for five 

 generations, since Erasmus and Robert Darwin, both naturalists 

 of high merit, grandfather and father of the illustrious Charles 

 Darwin, down to the sons and grandsons of the latter, one of whom, 

 George, has recently died after achieving some remarkable work in 

 natural history, and another, Leonard Darwin, who presided re- 

 cently at the meeting of the Eugenic Congress in London. The Gal- 

 tons likewise were perpetuated by Sir Francis Galton, grandson of 

 Charles Darwin through his mother. It was he who founded the 

 Eugenic Laboratory of London, and accumulated numerous works on 

 heredity, from which the greater part of the facts that I will relate 

 to you are borrowed. 



The most beautiful example of mental heredity is that of the Bach 

 family, the musicians. The beginner was Veit Bach, a baker at Pres- 

 bourg, who refreshed himself after his toil by his songs and music. 

 He had two sons, who commenced that unbroken line of musicians 

 of the same name which spread over Thuringe, Saxony, and Fran- 

 conia for nearly two centuries. Fifty-seven musicians of that family 



