5i6 



The Review of Reviews. 



WHO CAN FATHOM HEREDITY ? 



In the Comhill for May Dr. .Stephen Paget writes on 

 heredity and life. He says tliat there are some of us, 

 and they not fools, who find it hard to believe that 

 eugenics will ever have much influence either on the 

 science or the art of life. \\c cannot understand, \\c 

 may not deny, the availalsle fads of heredity, liut we 

 must not imagine we can fathom them : — 



We have got thus far, with all our talk aliout heredity, and 

 no further : that we must be more scrupulous and reverent in 

 our exercise of the awful power of parentage, and must go in 

 more fear of reproducing, in the next generation, nothing belter 

 than ourselves, or something worse. 



Imagine that he and she, in a few months' time, are to be 

 man and wife. Each of them is aware that no .act of humanity, 

 between the cradle and the grave, is so tremendous in its con- 

 sequences as the begetting and conci'iving of a child. It is daily 

 in, their thoughts, it is perpettially drumming in their hearts, 

 that they are about to exercise thi^ irrevocable and everlasting 

 authority of creative power. Whatever their failh may be, tliey 

 cherish this one hope, that the child will be born healthy, well 

 formed, and free from all mental taint or defect. For the rest, 

 they mean to take good care of him, to give him a good educa- 

 tion, and to set him a good example. He will have, to the 

 best of their knowledge and belief, what they call a fair chance; 

 they do not see further, nor desire to sec further. They are in 

 love, they enjoy average health, they want to have children ; 

 and they find a sanction for this naiuial want in the assurance 

 that they are not the first married couple to have children. 

 ■Still, they are not without wholesome fear of what may happen ; 

 and it is possible that one of them will make up his mind to 

 read something about heredity. Me will buy a large book, 

 profusely illustrated. 



This he finds useless, or wor.^e than useless, for his 

 high purpose. It describes the cell, reports what the 

 microscope can show. But there are vastly finer bleiid- 

 ings than the most immensely magnified microscope ctin 

 show. The higher we go in the scale of life the finer 

 become the issues. We think that we are merely deal- 

 ing with the facts of science, whereas it is life itself that 

 we are trying to put into words. The writer has much 

 sympathy with the man in the street who doubts 

 whether he desires to see the State interfering in these 

 matters. " He is not even sure that the ante- natal 

 conditions of a human life will ever be within the ken 

 of science." 



IS MAN ON THE EVE OF EXTINCTION? 



A VERY interesting paper on " Prehistoric Man " in 

 the Edinburgh Kcviau for April ends with a forecast 

 that is by no means too cheering. The writer says :— 



They have to die and are replaced by other races. So we 

 may infer that the people of the great Steel Age will have to 

 perish, just as the people of the .Stone Age and the Bronze Age 

 perished before them. But where arc the people to replace 

 them? The Neolithic people were growing to maturity in one 

 part of the earth while their I'alocolithic predecessors were 

 decorating the walls of their caves in Western liurope. But 

 we people of the Steel Age have left no corner of the earth un- 

 I xplored. We hold the key lo matcri.il power, and no people 

 nf a later steel age could compete with us. P<rliai>s, therefore, 

 we are the last phase in the cvoliition of man. When we 

 become extinct, cither through the consumption of natural 

 resources, or much more proliably through physical degenera- 



tion, the earlli will once more be abandoned to lowe: animals. 

 They again will slowly become extinct as the internal heat 

 of the earth is dissipated : so that not only nations, races, 

 and species arc impermanent, but Life itself also must have an 

 end. We think with pity of" the last survivor of the extinct 

 race of Tasmanians, whu died in 1877. How can we picture to 

 our>elves the last rcpresetilalive of the human species? And 

 must we tlien believe that the earth will roll on infinitely into 

 llie future, a permanent cemetery, disturbed only by occasional 

 collisions with other heavenly bodies? We do not know. 



We are accustomed to prophets of the second advent 

 who hail the unrest that disturbs the planet to-day 

 as a sure sign of the near end of the world. It is less 

 usual to find a similar forecast in a joiirnal like the 

 F.(Unburgh Review. 



THE QUEST OF THE PERFECT ROSE. 



Under this title iMr. Fninklin Clarkin writes in the 

 Lady's Realm, and gives one a few of the cjualifica- 

 tions necessarv to the search for new forms of flowering 

 life:— 



To deserve the title "rosarian" one must be oneself a high 

 type of development. Otherwise, the graces of character which 

 gardening gives will succumb to pride and vainglory. The 

 causes lie in the power that the work puts ^n the rosarian's 

 hands. 



Hybridisation is intermixing wild natural species, or crossing 

 hybrids already produced. In either case, the method is the 

 same — enormously careful transference by hand of the pollen of 

 one kind of rose lo another. Thus : 



Enclosed by the petals are hollow tubes called pistils, in the 

 bottom of which are unfertilised seeds or ovules. Bending to- 

 wards the tips of the pistils are the stamens, on the points of 

 which arc borne little sacs, called anthers, where the pollen, the 

 fcrlilising element, is formed. Left to themselves, the stamens 

 will shake the ]:)ollcn from their anthers on to the ape." of thtr 

 pistil, through which it reaches the ovule and fertilises it. 



If you wish to breed together two different sorts, you nnivt 

 first snip off the anthers of one flower, thereby making it solely 

 feminine, instead of double-sexed. I'his putative mother-flower 

 is then to have its pistils dusted by the pollen taken with a soft 

 brush from the anthers of the flower selected to be the father. 



If the day be bright, with plenty of electricity in the air to 

 make all life lively, and if pollen and pistils are ripe and ready, 

 and if the chosen plants are not too remotely different and 

 antipathetic, and if you cautiously protect the flower from insects 

 and winds by tying a bag over it, why, then, D.V., the seeds 

 will form. And if you plant them carefully, about two per cent, 

 of them will spring up and bloom, and you will have produceil 

 perhaps a new marvel of creation — or perhaps an unconscionabh' 

 ugly mongrel ! 



.Ml of which spells patience and plenty of it, with 

 the prospect of perpetual disappointment. Mr. Clarkin 

 tells of international rivalr}- in producing the blue 

 rose, and the story is only one more testimonx' to 

 man's irresislililc itch to achieve the unatttiinable. 



The Strand for May contains an interview with Mr. 

 J. H. F. Bacon, who tells how the Coronation picture 

 was painted. A friend relates that as a boy Mr. Bacon 

 was greatly stirred by the sight of an engraving of 

 David's " Coronation of Napoleon," and the fancy 

 crossed his mind to wonder if he would ever paint a 

 Coronation. He modestly says that the work of paint- 

 ing the last Coronation picture could not succeetl, ;tnd 

 might be a gigantic failtiie. 



