THE PROBLEMS ILLUSTRATED 21 



Simple illustrations are afforded by instinctive likes and dis- 

 likes, attractions and repulsions. " So old is the feud between 

 the cat and the dog," says Spalding, " that the kitten knows its 

 enemy before it is able to see him, and when its fear can in no 

 way serve it. One day, after fondling my dog, I put my hand 

 into a basket containing four blind kittens three days old. The 

 smell that my hand carried with it set them puffing and spitting 

 in a most comical fashion." 



Experiments with young birds hatched from artificially in- 

 cubated eggs and kept away from all contact with their kind 

 show conclusively that certain capacities are truly part of the 

 inheritance, and require no experience or suggestion, while 

 others not more complex require to be learnt. Thus the power 

 of uttering the characteristic call-note is inborn, but chicks 

 require to learn what is good for eating and what is deleterious. 

 Thus the power of executing the proper swimming and diving 

 movements is inherited, but chicks do not instinctively know that 

 water is drinkable. It is one of the problems of inheritance to 

 distinguish between inborn capacities and those which require 

 education. 



An even more difficult problem, which Prof. Pearson has 

 successfully tackled by an ingenious indirect method, relates 

 to the inheritance of man's mental and moral qualities. Though 

 very plastic, there is no doubt that they are inherited in rudi- 

 ment, just like physical characters. Just as the Romans dis- 

 tinguished physically the long-nosed Nasones, the thick-lipped 

 Labeones, the swollen-cheeked Buccones, and the big-headed 

 Capitones, so, as Voltaire points out, " the Appii were ever proud 

 and inflexible, and the Catos always austere." 



The literature of inheritance is crowded with examples of the 

 transmissibility of what we cannot but call trivial peculiarities, 

 though the probability is that they are often the correlates of 

 what is important. A few illustrations may be selected : 



" A gentleman had a peculiar formation of the right eyebrow. 



