Heredity of the Sensorial Qualities. 43 



even idiocy. Of this the distinguished anatomist Menckel gives 

 many instances. But we will consider hereafter this obscure point 

 of the metamorphoses or transformations of heredity. 



It has seemed to us more natural to discuss the heredity of the 

 musical faculty under the head of imagination. As will be seen, 

 there is perhaps no other artistic talent that presents more con- 

 clusive instances of hereditary transmission (the three Mozarts, the 

 two Beethovens, the more than 120 members of the Bach family). 

 Still, however important the part we assign to the influence of the 

 imagination and of the intellectual faculties, it must be admitted 

 that there can be no musical talent without a certain disposition of 

 the organs of hearing. Here education does next to nothing, for 

 it is nature that gives 'a good ear.' Hence the incontestable 

 heredity of the aptness for music necessarily implies the heredity of 

 certain qualities of hearing. This conclusion applies to performers 

 as well as to composers. 



IV. OF SMELL AND TASTE. 



It is hardly possible to separate here these two senses, which are 

 so closely allied that smell may be called taste acting at a 

 distance. 



Man, no doubt, ranks below other animals as regards fineness of 

 the sense of smell. Nowhere among the human family, even 

 among the negroes, can be found a sense of smell as acute as that 

 of dogs, of carnivorous animals in general, and of certain insects. 

 Gratiolet, in his Anatomic Comparee du Systime Nerveux, states 

 that an old piece of wolf-skin, with the hair all worn away, when ; 

 set before a little dog, threw the animal into convulsions of fear by ' 

 the slight scent attaching to it. The dog had never seen a wolf; 

 and we can only explain this alarm by the hereditary transmission 

 of certain sentiments, coupled with a certain perception of the 

 sense of smell. 



It is notorious that, to a great extent, the value of the canine 

 race depends on their native, and therefore hereditary, subtlety of 

 scent 



If in animals so highly endowed in this respect we could 

 note individual differences, we should probably see them trans- 



