INHERITANCE AND BREEDING 99 



i sties among a large proportion of the Royal Houses at 

 preserit existing. 



It is very difficult indeed impossible until much 

 more is written and read on the subjects of breeding 

 and of psychology to persuade people to abandon the 

 notion that a man who has drunk good wine and 

 conversed with interesting people will, as a direct 

 result, transmit something which he has " taken up " or 

 absorbed from the good wine and the clever people to 

 his offspring, and that a faculty for this or that art or 

 accomplishment cultivated by generation after generation 

 is increased thereby, and transferred as it were into the 

 very vitals of the race the reproductive germs which 

 each individual has within him. There is no truth 

 whatever in these fancies. They are popular and very 

 natural delusions, which are not only devoid of direct 

 proof by simple observation and experiment, such as 

 that made by all breeders of stock and by medical men, 

 but are also contrary to the great general principles 

 which have been found to explain the varied and most 

 important facts known as to breeding, inheritance, and 

 variation. The same erroneous theory of inheritance 

 now applied to royalty has been put forward in regard 

 to the feeble-minded, the ill-grown, and the incapable 

 at the other end of the social scale. 



The only way in which a quality, good or bad, 

 desirable or undesirable, is intensified, made inherent 

 and dominant in a race or strain or family, is by 

 selective breeding selection due to natural rejection 

 of those individuals not possessing the quality, or to 

 artificial rejection of such individuals by the stock 

 owner and breeder. No human maker of breeds 

 whether of cattle, horses, birds, or plants ever yet 

 proceeded by exercising, feeding, educating, or otherwise 

 manipulating his sires and dams ; he simply selects 

 those as parents which by natural variation have the 

 quality, more or less, which he desires, and he destroys 



H % 



