INFLUENCE OF MALE AND FEMALE PARENT 123 



From time to time the English public have been 

 amused by reading of young negro barristers and 

 missionaries, mostly half-bloods, who, after being 

 educated in London or at Oxford, have returned 

 to their native place and relapsed into a state of 

 savagery — "gone fanti," as the saying is. This has 

 been humorously referred to as a proof of the infe- 

 riority of civilisation to barbarism in the estimation 

 of those who have tried both. In reality it attests 

 the preponderance of hereditary instinct over edu- 

 cation, the instinct in the case of mulattoes being 

 derived from the negro parent. The French mis- 

 sionaries in China have experienced the truth of this 

 principle also in the case of young Chinese converts. 

 When wolves and dogs are crossed, some of the 

 resulting litter resemble the mother in outward 

 appearance, others the father. But this curious 

 fact is noted, that the whelps looking like wolves 

 frequently have the dog's nature, and those looking 

 like dogs the wolfs. The offspring of the stag and 

 the cow have the male parent's timidity, and also his 

 agility in clearing fences. Girou mentions the case 

 of two shrewish sisters who married men of quiet 

 and gentle disposition. Of the offspring in each 

 instance all the sons were like the mother in 



