HERCULES 



2781 



HEREDITY 



In his agony he uprooted great pines, and 

 Lichas, who had brought the robe to him, he 

 flung into the sea from the heights of Mount 

 Oeta. Finally, to end the unbearable pain, 

 he erected a huge funeral pile on the moun- 

 tain, laid himself upon it, and commanded his 

 friend Philoctetes to apply the torch. When 

 the flames had consumed all of him that was 

 mortal, great Zeus descended from heaven and 

 bore away his soul to the abode of the gods, 

 where, wedded to the goddess Hebe, he lived 

 in everlasting happiness. 



There are several famous representations of 

 Hercules in painting and sculpture. The orig- 

 inal of the illustration on page 2779, the 

 Farnese Hercules, is in the National Museum 

 at Naples. Other notable works on the sub- 

 ject include the Infant Hercules Strangling a 

 Serpent (antique sculpture) in the Uffizi at 

 Florence; C. C. Cleyre's painting, ' Hercules at 

 the Feet of Omphale, in the Louvre, Paris; 

 and Guido Reni's painting, Hercules Fighting 

 the Hydra, also in the Louvre. J.F.C. 



Consult Gayley's Classic Myths in English Lit- 

 erature and in Art; Winter's Myths of Hercules. 



HERCULES, PILLARS OF, an ancient name 

 given to the two rocks at the sides of the 

 narrow entrance to the Mediterranean Sea at 

 the Strait of Gibraltar. One pillar, on the 

 European side, was called Calpe; the other, 

 on the African side, Abyla. The ancient 

 Greeks ascribed their erection to Hercules on 

 the occasion of his journey to the kingdom of 

 Geryon. A thousand years before Christ the 

 pillars were crowned by silver columns erected 

 by the Phoenician mariners to mark the limits 

 of navigation; there is a legend to the effect 

 that they bore a warning to over-ambitious 

 mariners, in the words Ne plus ultra (no more 

 beyond). 



HERCULES BEETLE, be't'l, a remarkably 

 large and strong beetle, found in the West 

 Indies and in tropical America. The male 

 attains a length of five inches. The insect has 

 long, curving horns projecting from the head 

 and thorax; these 

 are curved to 

 meet each other ' -^ ^ 

 and are used as 

 forceps accord- 

 ing to some au- 

 thorities, as saws. The female is much smaller 

 than the male, and has no horns. Two species 

 of Hercules beetles are found in the Southern 

 United States ; the largest is, o'f a greenish-gray 

 color. 



HERCULES BEETLE 



HEREDITY, hered'iti. Herbert Spencer 

 defines heredity as "the capacity of every plant 

 and animal to reproduce other individuals of 

 a like kind." The child is like the parent in 

 form, structure, general characteristics and 

 habits of life. It does not bear a perfect re- 

 semblance to either parent, but usually has 

 some characteristics of each. There are, how- 

 ever, certain characteristics pertaining to each 

 child which vary from those of the parents, 

 and of the other children. While these varia- 

 tions are numerous they are minute as com- 

 pared with the likenesses. This law of hered- 

 ity is necessary to the maintenance of life. 

 Says an eminent authority, "If the offspring 

 are to live in the same environments, they 

 must closely resemble their parents. Step by 

 step, from the germ to the adult, the child 

 treads in the developmental footsteps of the 

 parent." 



Notwithstanding the prolonged efforts of 

 scientists to discover the real cause of heredity, 

 much still remains to be learned. Some 

 facts, however, are fully established. We do 

 not know why some characteristics are repro- 

 duced more frequently than others, but we 

 know that if both parents have blue eyes and 

 light hair these characteristics will appear in 

 the children with rarely an exception. If one 

 of the parents has light hair and blue eyes and 

 the other dark hair and eyes, some of the 

 children will resemble one parent and some 

 the other in. these characteristics. Sometimes 

 a child resembles one of the grandparents 

 more closely than it does its parents, occa- 

 sionally it may bear characteristics of an aunt 

 or uncle, and now and then there is a rever- 

 sion to a more remote ancestor (see ATAVISM). 

 Sir Francis Galton gave the following law of 

 expectation of inherited characteristics: "Of 

 the entire heritage of the offspring, the two 

 parents contribute one-half, the four grand- 

 parents one-fourth, the eight great grandpar- 

 ents one-sixteenth and so on in diminishing 

 ratio until the sum of the fractions equals 

 one." From extended experiments with plants 

 Mendel discovered that the offspring inherited 

 the characters of one parent to the exclusion 

 of those of the other, and recent investigations 

 show this to be true of animals as well. Racial 

 characteristics, such as the curly hair and thick 

 lips of the negro and the high cheek bones 

 ' and straight hair of the Indian, are inherited 

 from generation to generation, but the inher- 

 itance of individual characteristics is more un- 

 certain. That is, the child may not resemble 



