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FOOT-NOTES TO EVOLUTION. 



It has long been a matter of common belief that 

 among mammals a special formative influence is exerted 

 by the mother in the period between conception and 

 birth. The patriarch Jacob is reputed to have made a 

 thrifty use of this influence in relation to the herds of 

 his father-in-law Laban. This belief is part of the folk- 

 lore of almost every race of intelligent men. In the 

 translations of Carmen Silva, that gentle woman whom 

 kind Nature made a poet and cruel fortune a queen, we 

 find these words of a Roumanian peasant woman : 



" My little child is lying in the grass, 

 His face is covered with the blades of grass. 

 While I did bear the child, I ever watched 

 The reaper work, that it might love the harvests ; 

 And when the boy was born, the meadow said, 

 ' This is my child.'" 



In the current literature of hysterical ethics we find 

 all sorts of exhortations to mothers to do this and not 

 to do that, to cherish this and avoid that on account of 

 its supposed effect on the coming progeny. Long lists 

 of cases have been reported illustrating the law of pre- 

 natal influences. Most of these records serve only to 

 induce scepticism. Many of these are mere coinci- 

 dences, some are unverifiable, some grossly impossible, 

 and some read like the certificates of patent medicines. 

 There is an evident desire to make a case rather than 

 to tell the truth. The whole matter is much in need of 

 serious study, and the entire record of alleged facts 

 must be set aside to make an honest beginning. 



Dr. Weismann ridicules it all and believes that all 

 forms of mother's marks, prenatal influences, and the 

 like, are relics of mediaeval superstition. Other authori- 

 ties of equal rank, as Henry Fairfield Osborn, believe 

 that these supposed influences exist and are occasional- 

 ly made evident. Doubtless most of the current stories 



