ACQUIRED CHARACTERS. 41 



classes whose ancestors, from the grandparents down, 

 had been born and bred in London. How was this ? 

 Can it be explained otherwise than by the gradual 

 extinction of the family by transmitted physical in- 

 feriority or impaired vitality ? The healthy labourer 

 going into London loses a part of his vitality because 

 of the wretched conditions under which he exists, and 

 in a few years he is a much inferior man to what he 

 once was. His children inherit his impaired constitu- 

 tion, and in their turn deteriorate a stage further, beget 

 a still more wretched offspring, and so on to extinction. 

 Mr. Cantlie, after describing some miserable specimens 

 of humanity he discovered who nearly approached 

 what he was in search of, says : " I have never come 

 across the children of any such, and I believe it is not 

 likely I ever shall. Nature steps in and denies the 

 continuance of such." 



Thus does the environment create, modify, and ex- 

 tinguish physical characters, and its action is not less 

 effectual in the mental and moral worlds. Just as the 

 degenerate physical development of the poor dwellers 

 in large cities is handed down from parent to child, so 

 has the liability to scrofula, gout, rheumatism, epilepsy, 

 insanity, and drunkenness been acquired and trans- 

 mitted, as is also the predisposition to crime handed 

 down an heirloom in that degenerate race the instinc- 

 tive criminal. Just as the fine physical development 

 of the yeoman and the degenerate frame of the Cockney 

 have been the outcome of certain conditions of environ- 

 ment, so have the clear financial insight of the Hebrew, 



