302 GENETICS AND EUGENICS 



child by a feeble-minded wife who left degenerate lines of 

 descent. Two experiments have been made on a large scale 

 which seem fairly definite even though quantitative results 

 cannot at present be reached. The mulattoes may be as- 

 sumed to have a hevedity midway between negroes and 

 whites, but their social environment is that of the negroes, 

 and their performance corresponds with their social environ- 

 ment rather than with their heredity. Illegitimate children 

 have perhaps a heredity as good as the average, but their 

 performance falls far below the average. If performance 

 were determined by heredity alone there might be expected 

 to be among our thousand leading scientific men some forty 

 mulattoes and some forty of illegitimate birth, whereas there 

 is probably not one of either class. 



"At nearly the same time Agassiz came from abroad to 

 Harvard and Briinnow to Michigan. We all know the list 

 of distinguished naturalists trained under Agassiz — Brooks, 

 Hyatt, Jordan, Lyman, Minot, Morse, Packard, Putnam, 

 Scudder, Shaler, Verrill, Whitman, Wilder, and many more, 

 directly and indirectly. From Michigan have come, as is not 

 so well known, one-fourth of our most distinguished astron- 

 omers, including Abbe, Campbell, Comstock, Curtis, Doo- 

 little. Hall, Hussey, Klotz, Leuschner, Payne, Schaeberle, 

 Watson and Woodward. Certainly the coming of Agassiz 

 and Briinnow was the real cause of greatly increased scientific 

 productivity in America. Some, but not all, of those who 

 worked under Agassiz would have become naturalists apart 

 from his influence. The astronomers from Michigan must in 

 the main be attributed to their environment. The men had 

 the necessary ability, but if Briinnow had not gone to Michi- 

 gan, they would not have become astronomers; if they had 

 gone to the University of Pennsylvania, they would have 

 been more likely to have become physicians than astrono- 

 mers; if they had not gone to a university they would not 

 have become scientific men. 



"It is certainly satisfactory if we can attribute the inferi- 

 ority of scientific performance in America as compared with 



